Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) would start 3,607 special buses for ferrying people during the forthcoming Sankranti festival rush in January 2021. "APSRTC has made all arrangements to ferry people from neighbouring states to their hometowns for the Sankranti festival," said Road Transport Corporation's Executive Director (operations) Brahmananda Reddy.
These special buses would operate in the state from January 8 to 13 next year. As many as 1,251 buses would be operating from Hyderabad and other places in Telangana to Andhra Pradesh. As many as 433 buses would ferry the festival travellers from Bengaluru and 133 buses would operate from Chennai.
Within Andhra Pradesh, 201 buses would run from all the state districts to Vijayawada, 551 to Visakhapatnam and another 1,038 between the state districts.
In Telugu culture, Sankranti is one of the biggest festivals attracting thousands of people working and settled elsewhere to return back home for the celebrations.
It was in November that State Road Transport Corporation bus services between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh resumed, after a gap of more than seven months due to the coronavirus lockdown and as the two Telugu states finally resolved their differences on the operation of government bus services in each other's territory. Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was signed, TSRTC buses will operate on 1,61,258-km routes in Andhra Pradesh while APSRTC buses will cover 1,60,999 km in Telangana. This was more evenly distributed as before lockdown, TSRTC used to run buses on 1.5 lakh-km routes in Andhra, while the latter ran a 2.5 lakh-km route in Telangana.