When I went to Chennai two months back I spoke to SETC officials at Koyembedu Bus Stand. They said that they have taken up the case to have a website for SETC and that it is pending approval and it will be done very soon. I have personally taken the pictures of all the notice boards kept at SETC bus stands and typed the entire bus routes, timings into a table and posted it on this website. But I see that most of the other sites just copy paste the entire table on their website and they don’t even mention a courtesy on their website.

I spoke to concerned people in SETC at Chennai. Approval has been done for having a website for SETC. Mostly they will start online reservation also very soon. Let us hope for the best.

I request the SETC management to introduce this facility for the sake of the public and enjoy the facility.

Krish

I had three pieces of luggage which are a suit case, an ordinary side bag and a small backpack bag. Total weight will be about 25 kgs. When I took the bags inside, in front of the bus conductor,
he did not tell me anything how many pieces of luggage I can carry and how much total weight of the luggage is allowed. Neither is anything written on the ticket. The bus started, then the conductor came to me and asked for the ticket. I gave him the ticket. He asked for extra 5:00 rupees. I gave him and asked it is for what. He said something in Tamil(which I don’t understand), which seems to me “because the fair has increased”. Then I said, “The petrol price has been increased after that I booked the ticket. While booking the ticket, I paid the ticket amount Rs. 235.
Why did not ticket booking person in the booking counter take Rs. 240.” Then he went away from the bus for a while and later on came
back with a receipt of Rs. 5.00 and gave me. So far everything was
good. after a while he started enquiring about my bags. and asked
whose bags are these. I said mine. Then he started dragging my bags and was saying something very rudely. He said, This many bags are not allowed. Then started lifting the bags and trying to guess the weight of the bags, and dumping my backpack bag violently. In that bag I had a laptop costing Rs. 40,000.
It could have been broken. I was trying to convince him, but he was so furious that he did not listen to me at all. Then asked for extra money. I said why. He said for extra luggage. I asked, how many kgs of luggage is allowed? He said, only my back pack bag is allowed, which can contain only 7-8 kgs of luggage. Then he asked me for Rs. 75. I said, “nothing is written on the ticket, neither have I been told this before when I carried two bags, a suitcase and a backpack bag. Why is this time I have to pay Rs. 75?”
He was behaving so furiously that I feared whether I would be beaten by him. I was travelling alone, and the bus conductor who should help the passenger and guide him properly was misbehaving so badly. Then he was pressurising me to open my bags and to show him what the contents of the bag was. I said it is difficult to open here as there are many small things and packed carefully. My luggage contains only dress material and some house hold things for my personal usage. He continued to shout at me and said that my luggage may contain dangerous/illegal material. I said,
“If it is so then the transport authority should check my luggage before I get in the bus. And just because I am asking you why should I give money, you cannot hassle me like that.” Then I gave him Rs. 75 and asked him for a receipt. With reluctance he ultimately gave me the receipt. He was basically asking for the bribe and on my refusal he became violent. After I gave Rs. 75, things are sort of looked fine. By the way, in the bus there was a person knowing both Tamil and English who was the interpreter between me and the conductor.

However, when I got down at kalpakkam, my wife came to receive me at the Kalpakkam bus stand. The conductor again started shouting. First asked my wife whether she knows Tamil. Then she said, no. After that he started shouting at both of us and talking something about luggage which I fully cannot make out as there is no interpreter now. Then I said, in English, I will complain to the police for harassing me. He then started rushing towards and asked me to open my luggage and said this much luggage is not
allowed. I said, “why should I open the lughgage?” Then there were many people in the bus stand and came towards us after seeing that the conductor was shouting at me and my wife. I explained them. Then everybody in the bus stand told him, “why are you harassing him? You have no authority to ask him to open the bags.” Still the person was obstinate. After that people in the bus stand asked him how much luggage is allowed. He said, 20 kg. So he gave
me a wrong information in the bus that only my backpack bag was allowed. So he misguided me. After a lot of hullabaloo the person refrained to hassle me any further after being cornered in argument by all the people in the bus stand. Now please imaging, if nobody came forward to help me in the bus stand, he would have hassled me a lot unnecessarily just because I protested against him when he asked me for the bribe.

Moreover, I know him as very misbehaving conductor as I have invariably found him, whenever he was on duty during my travel in SETC bus between Bangalore and Kalpakkam. I have been travelling often in SETC bus in this route for the last 10 months or so. It is quite disheartening that he misbehave as soon as I start to talk either in Hindi or English which are the languages that I can communicate in with the people throughout India and outside Bengal where I am originally from.

If this is the behaviour of a bus conductor, then I am afraid, how people can protest about taking illegal money or bribery. If a protest has such a bad impact on the protester, then it is really so sad about the SETC organisation.