It has been Pre-election fewer in Mumbai as the parties compete with each other to woo voters by implementing few offers to the citizens of Mumbai. Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has reduced tariffs of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport undertaking. Whereas the Shiv Sena has set to give free passes to disabled people and 50% discount or concession to the senior citizens.

According to the 2011 census, it is recorded that there is 12 lakh elderly people in the city and 21% of them, live below the poverty line. Mayor Snehal Ambekar, from Shiv Sena, asked the civic administration to work on the modalities to issue the free passes and 50% concessions.

The Shiv Sena party has planned a small event to issue passes on May 1 at the Mayor’s house. “The plan was to give monthly and tri-monthly passes with 50 per cent concessions to the handicapped people and to senior citizens. Since the mayor asked us to give free passes to the handicapped people, we are studying it. But the plan has been postponed further,” said a civic official.

“If everything works out smoothly in next 8-10 days, we will have a big event and also call the party president for the programme of issuing free passes and passes with concessions. As of now, we are waiting for the civic administration to work out on things,” said the corporator.

For the first time, Shiv Sena and BJP exchanged the portfolios of statutory committees in the civic body BEST last month. It was headed by Shiv Sena till March and handed over to BJP in April. On Monday, the Shiv Sena corporators had protested against the BEST’s decision of scrapping the 52 bus routes that were making least profits. Hence, the public transport has decided to resume the buses in next 3 days.

“We have decided to restore the services of these 52 buses taking into consideration a huge demand by the public for the same. Our next step will be to decide the scheduling of the staff for these buses,” Jagdish Patil, General Manager, BEST said.