Following a series of bus accidents in the last couple of days, including the horrific accident at Osamanabad district in Maharashtra in which 30 Shirdi devotees from Andhra Pradesh were killed, the Andhra Pradesh Transport Department conducted searches in the offices of travel agencies across the state today. The searches were conducted under the supervision of Department’s Joint Commissioner Venkateswarulu on the activities and operations of the private buses to find out if they had violated Motor Vehicles Act. During the searches, the transport department teams seized several documents and data from the offices of travel agencies that included major bus offices of SVR, Kesineni, Kaleswaram, Sri Krishna and Padmavathi. The searches were conducted at Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Guntur, Tirupati and Visakhapatnam. During the searches, the transport officials found that some agencies at Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad and Vijayawada had violated the Motor Vehicles Act, according to sources in the department. Action would be initiated against the travel and tourist agents after verifying the documents and other papers related to Motor Vehicles Act which were seized from their offices, the sources said. For the inter-state buses there should be two drivers, the sources said, adding the department would find out whether the travel offices were complying with it or not. UNI
