The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking, once the pride of Mumbai’s streets, is now operating on what experts call “borrowed oxygen”. Despite serving 23 lakh daily commuters, the fleet has dwindled to just 249 self-owned buses, with the remainder of the service reliant on private leases. The total fleet size, including wet lease buses, now stands at 2650 buses. The fleet size also defies a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the transport utility and BEST unions, signed in 2019, which requires BEST to have 3337 buses in its own fleet.

Gandharva Purohit, daily commuter