Alarmed with a falling number of buses in the fleet, the BEST Bachao team and trade unions approached all 36 MLAs from Mumbai, urging them to ask BMC to provide funds to the BEST undertaking to buy more buses. The BEST is commemorating 77 years of its municipalisation on Wednesday.

Mid-Day had highlighted a story on July 10 on the dwindling number of BEST buses. The number of self-owned buses in the BEST undertaking`s fleet is rapidly decreasing. Shockingly, the organisation has not purchased a single bus in the past six years. The latest RTI figures revealed that BEST’s own fleet was down to nearly just 1,000 buses, with 2,200-plus buses taken by the undertaking on a wet lease (contractor-owned with their staff).