Follow safety norms or start another business, HC tells school bus owners

Maharashtra School Bus Owners Association, who wanted to stay the state notification issued in June on safety measures to be adopted by bus owners, failed to get interim relief from the Bombay high court on Tuesday.

Posting the matter for final hearing, a division bench of justices DY Chandrachud and AM Sayyed said, “Our paramount consideration is welfare and safety of children. If the school bus owners don’t want to adopt the measures, they can stop this business and start something else.”

The bench allowed Arya Gurukul and Unaided Forum of Schools, who did not want to enter into a contract with the bus owners as directed by the notification, to file an intervening application. However, it said, “When parents send their child in an autorickshaw, the responsibility is theirs, but when they send him/her in a school bus, they presume that safety standards will be maintained by the school.”

“We are least interested in the business of bus owners or administration, it is about children’s safety, and we won’t allow the schools to wash their hands of this,” the judges added.

The interveners had opposed the notification on the grounds that they don’t want to appoint a special committee and hire more people for handling school buses.

The bus owners association has challenged the compulsory installation of speed governor in all buses and implementation of safety rules. It argues that school buses aren’t vehicles dedicated to transporting schoolchildren alone, and are used for other purposes too where it isn’t possible to limit their speed to 40kmph as required by the regulations.

The state said the regulations were put in place after consulting representatives of bus operators, who were given a hearing, and yet, the regulations are being challenged at the 11th hour.