• NET Web Desk

The Agartala-Kolkata bus service via Dhaka, which was slated to resume from today, following a two-year suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had been postponed due to “technical issues.” – informed the Agartala Mayor Dipak Majumder.

He claimed that the decision to postpone the service was made minutes before a bus carrying 16 passengers was scheduled to depart from here for Kolkata.

“We were set to flag off the Kolkata bound bus via Dhaka, however the resumption of service has been postponed due to some technical issues in the clearance procedure,” – stated the Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) mayor.

The Assistant High Commissioner of Bangladesh in Agartala – Arif Mohammad was also present at the Tripura State Transport Corporation International Terminal at Krishnanagar for the programme.

“It appears that none of the parties involved have been informed about the resumption of the international bus operation. But, because there is demand on both sides, we all want to start the bus service as soon as possible,” the Bangladeshi diplomat said.

The Bangladesh Assistant High Commission in Agartala receives 500-600 visa applications each day from persons who desire to travel to their neighbouring nation for variety of reasons.

“All the technical procedures – from permission to visa for crew members- were done out on our side,” – asserted the TRTC Managing Director – Rajesh Kumar Das.

“We’ll take care of the issue that prevented the bus service from resuming. Once service is restored, a bus will travel 500 kilometres from Agartala to Kolkata via Dhaka in roughly 19 hours. Officials estimate that the train travel between the two destinations via Guwahati will take roughly 35 hours.” – he added.

They claim that the international bus service will assist customers in light of rising flight rates and a scarcity of long-distance train tickets.

Following the pandemic, the bus service on this route was halted in March 2020.