College students hold up overcrowded bus, demand additional services

BAGALKOT: With overcrowded buses and lack of additional schedules, a group of college students stopped a bus headed for Bagalkot for over an hour at Kerakalamatti village in Badami taluk on Friday.

The passengers included mostly women and some pass holders.

The bus, with a seating capacity of 54, was already carrying 120 passengers, including pass holders and women. At Kerakalamatti, a group of over 40 college students, blocked the bus insisting that they too should be accommodated on it.

The students complained that they are finding it difficult to reach their schools and colleges and to return home in the evenings due to overcrowding. They pointed out that several students head to Bagalkot every day from different villages and added that several requests to the authorities to deploy more buses had not borne fruit.