Public transport 'vanishes' in Amit Shah’s constituency, leaving Vejalpur residents stranded

The other day, someone very close to me took me to a sub-office of the Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services (AMTS), where I filled out a form for what has been loudly advertised as a free pass for senior citizens aged 65 and above.

I filled out the form and got the pass — only to find it wasn’t free. It cost me Rs 75. I didn’t mind paying, though, since the pass allows me to travel across the city on two public transport systems in Ahmedabad — AMTS and the Bus Rapid Transport Service (BRTS) — for two years.

The so-called free pass was issued only after AMTS officials insisted on two documents. Apparently, city officials do not consider Aadhaar — widely touted as the most important proof of identity in India — enough to confirm my age or my residence in Ahmedabad. They also wanted my latest paid property tax bill to verify whether I am an “honest citizen” of Ahmedabad.

Since the person accompanying me had already gone through the hassle of being turned away once for submitting only one document, I carried both.

I went to the AMTS office on my two-wheeler, so I didn’t immediately realize the pass is currently useless for those living in the sprawling and densely populated Vejalpur area of Ahmedabad, which houses mostly middle-class and lower-middle-class residents. This area was Amit Shah’s constituency when he served as an MLA from 1997, and it is now part of the Union Home Minister’s Lok Sabha constituency.

I thought: Why not make use of the pass? So, I walked to the nearest AMTS bus stop, just 300 metres from my home. I had used AMTS buses from Vejalpur before, though I usually rely on my two-wheeler. Public transport was never beneath me, unlike some acquaintances and relatives who dismiss it as being below their dignity.

To my shock, I discovered that AMTS buses have “temporarily” stopped plying to and from Vejalpur. The nearest functioning stop is Jaltarang, more than a kilometre away — a tough walk in the scorching sun. The excuse given was that there was “no space” for AMTS buses to move freely up to the Vejalpur bus stand or beyond.

Yet, as I stood there, I saw buses larger than AMTS vehicles — mostly ferrying schoolchildren — plying smoothly throughout Vejalpur. Someone nearby remarked, “If these buses can run, why can’t AMTS? The buses stopped plying via the Vejalpur stop two months back. The excuse was a repair work, which ended within a week.”

I don’t know when AMTS will resume service in my area, but I do know one thing from experience: public transport has never been a priority for the Gujarat government. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when I visited Ahmedabad from Delhi for summer holidays at my maternal uncle’s house, it was a highlight of city life.

In those days, AMTS buses offered excellent service. They were punctual, reliable, and commuter-friendly. But as the city expanded in the 1980s and 1990s, its so-called guardians ignored the growing need for public transport, blaming the surge in two- and four-wheelers on the general public instead of providing better alternatives.

In 1997, after five years as assistant editor at The Times of India, Ahmedabad, I was shifted to Gandhinagar to cover the Gujarat government. Public transport became a subject of special interest to me. While officials blamed rising air pollution on the proliferation of private vehicles, any plans for better public transport were routinely shelved.

The Gujarat Infrastructure Development Board (GIDB) had prepared a detailed study for a metro rail in Ahmedabad as far back as 2003. By 2005, the Government of India even offered funding. But the project was mysteriously shelved. Bureaucrats in the urban development department told me the metro wasn’t needed — Ahmedabad would instead adopt the “Columbia model” of BRTS, with its dedicated corridors and flyovers, like in Bogotá. I was shown photographs of how efficient BRTS was in Colombia.

I was convinced, and even wrote stories on why BRTS was better than a metro, quoting bureaucrats who argued that Ahmedabad didn’t need metro rail. But while other Indian cities expanded their metro systems, Ahmedabad settled for its own version of BRTS — riddled with obstructions at crossroads and lacking dedicated corridors in several stretches. From what I saw, it was never really “rapid.”

A senior bureaucrat once confided that one reason Ahmedabad didn’t get a metro earlier was political: Gujarat’s leadership didn’t want the Centre — then under a Congress-led coalition — to take the credit for it. So, metro plans were endlessly redrawn, appearing serious but never implemented, until 2014 when Narendra Modi became Prime Minister.

Only then did the project move forward. It gathered real momentum in 2019, when S.S. Rathore, an extremely competent technocrat I know personally, was appointed managing director.

Today, Ahmedabad has two metro lines, but it is still not the preferred commuting option for most citizens. Trains are infrequent, and the network bypasses many densely populated areas, including Vejalpur. Several stations, like Gupta Nagar and Paldi, are inconveniently located, and even the station near the Ahmedabad railway station is practically inaccessible for passengers arriving by train.

What baffles me most is the expansion of the metro to Gandhinagar — a city with only a fraction of Ahmedabad’s population: just two lakh vs 56 lakh, as per last 2011 Census. The route conveniently passes through GIFT City, Modi’s pet project to create a Mumbai-style financial hub, and continues up to Sachivalaya, the seat of power. Meanwhile, areas like Vejalpur are left neglected.

For a resident of Vejalpur like me, using the metro means first catching an AMTS bus to reach a station about three kilometres away. Ironically, even that isn’t possible now, since AMTS buses don’t operate here anymore. This, despite the fact that the area has sent Amit Shah as its elected representative for nearly three decades.