Speaking to the reporters, BEST General Manager Anil Diggikar claimed Sanjay More was given three days of induction training, while the latter’s son Deep More claimed his father underwent 9 to 10 days of training before he was given the electric bus to drive.As per the BEST records, More was driving the wet leased 7 to 9-meter Tempo Traveller mini buses in their fleet since November 2020, but had no experience driving a 12-metre electric bus as he earlier worked for M P Group, before joining Daga Group that recently withdrew its around 280 mini buses from BEST’s operation.A retired RTO official said the automatic transmission electric buses and manual transmission fossil fuel buses have different mechanisms. Hence, it takes some time to get used to driving them.”It is a human error probably caused by lack of knowledge,” he said.The driver, perhaps, did not have proper knowledge as automatic transmission electric buses do not have air-assisted braking systems, he added.Maharashtra Transport Commissioner Vivek Bhimanwar on Tuesday said the RTO team has investigated the bus, but the report from Olectra’s engineers is still awaited.”Our team has investigated the bus as per the set Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for inspecting the bus,” he said, adding they will submit their report to the Mumbai police.
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