Women hail free bus rides in state buses starting Monday
The Statesman | 2 June 2026
Women commuters hailed the West Bengal government’s scheme of allowing women to travel free in state-run buses starting today.
Several women welcomed the move saying it was a huge relief for them particularly for journeys to the office or other job-related bus rides. At many places, state-owned buses, this morning had more crowd of women than men.
While in the days to come, women would have to produce a pink card to be issued by the state government, for now they just have to show their valid documents including Aadhaar, PAN, ration cards or even other similar documents to the conductor of the bus to avail a free ride.
Debolina Banerjee, an IT sector employee, heaved a sigh of relief this morning when she boarded a government bus and completed her journey till Salt Lake without having to shell out any money. The journey generally cost her around Rs 50 one way at government AC buses. A free ride to the office this morning was a relief on her pocket which she hailed during her journey this morning.
Like Debolina, Shreyasi Chatterjee, working as a marketing agent in the IT hub of the city also felt happy for not having to spend money on bus journeys. “Being in the sales and marketing team, my work involves a lot of bus journeys every day. The state government’s initiative of free bus travel in its buses would bring relief to my pocket as I would be able to save that money and utilise it somewhere else,” said Shreyasi while travelling from Kidderpore to Salt Lake.
At Esplanade, women crowded at ticket counters issuing tickets for government buses to Digha, Mandarmani, Siliguri and other north Bengal and south Bengal destinations.
Srijita Pal, who bought five tickets for Digha said, “My friends and sisters had long been planning to go on a women only trip to Digha. Due to elections, the trip was postponed. Now that we have the facility to travel free in government buses, we wasted no time in planning the trip,” she added.
The women travellers, while hailing the initiative, felt that with the launching of the scheme, the government should roll out more buses so that more and more women could avail the facility. “With the new scheme in place, I found government buses were very crowded this morning. Getting into a bus was rather difficult as the entry point was packed with even women holding the handle and jostling while trying to board the bus,” claimed Ipshita Das, a second year commerce student. “To make the journeys smoother and a little more comfortable, there needs to be more and more such buses on the road,” asserted the Calcutta University student.