Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari (File photo)
New Delhi: New buses, including inter-city and sleeper coaches, won’t be registered by RTOs without physical and video inspection of all mandatory safety features, road transport minister Nitin Gadkari said on Tuesday. He also urged bus manufacturers to opt for alternative fuels saying “there is no future for vehicles operating on petrol and diesel” because of air pollution and prevailing global situation.Under this regime, vehicle manufacturers, bus body builders and the respective RTO will have to upload the filled checklist on govt’s Vahan portal, a move that will put an end to any scope of passing the buck in case of a mishap due to missing safety features. In recent cases, entities have often passed on the responsibility onto others.Speaking at Busworld India, Gadkari said govt won’t compromise on passenger safety highlighting how 142 lives were lost and another 200 were left injured in 12 bus accidents in the past six months. “Do good work or wind up your business,” he said.Gadkari said the checklist will be for each individual bus. TOI has learnt that to make it legally binding the road transport ministry will notify this under Central Motor Vehicle Rules and the draft notification will be issued soon.The checklist will include fire detection, alarm and suppression systems, required number of fire extinguishers, minimum mandatory number of exit doors without any obstruction, emergency hammer at every berth in case of sleeper coaches and others. “At every stage accountability will be fixed after this new regime is rolled out,” said an official. At a review meeting in December on bus fires, Gadkari was informed that out of around 60 sleeper buses registered with RTOs since Sept 2025 since new Bus Body Code came into effect, only a few had got type approval.Meanwhile, taking note of over 600 manual bus body builders engaging nearly 75,000 personnel may be impacted under a new regime of mandatory type approval from testing agencies, Gadkari announced that the testing charges by ARAI is now reduced by 50% and the processing timeline has been brought down to six weeks from earlier eight weeks.“We are not against you, but safety is a major concern,” the minister said.
