Ludhiana: A catastrophic legal default by municipal officials has forced a court-ordered liquidation of the city’s entire 120-bus fleet to settle a contractual dispute, effectively killing the industrial hub’s remaining public transport lines.Court officials on Wednesday posted the auction notices outside municipal headquarters at Mata Rani Chowk, setting a July 2 sale date following a protracted legal battle over fare revisions between Ludhiana City Bus Services Limited (LCBSL) and private operator Horizon Connect Transways.The auction marks a catastrophic failure for the centrally funded Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) project, which has faced legal, financial, and environmental hurdles since its 2006 inception.The dispute dates back to Jan 2024, when an independent arbitrator ordered LCBSL to pay ₹5.8 crore to Horizon Connect to compensate for losses incurred running the fleet on unviable, fixed low fares.The Ludhiana municipal corporation challenged the arbitration award in local courts and lost, before escalating the appeal to the Punjab and Haryana high court, which agreed to hear the case on the condition that the civic body deposit 50% of the compensation in cash and the remaining half as security.While the court unfroze the civic body’s bank accounts specifically to facilitate the cash deposit, municipal officials failed to pay. Consequently, the case collapsed back into the lower courts, triggering the asset seizure order.Horizon Connect managing director Jaskirat Singh said the private operator had exhausted all out-of-court avenues before seeking asset liquidation.“We will now file contempt of court charges and request police lodge a first-information report (FIR) against the specific officer responsible,” he said. “The auction of these buses will not cover our full losses, so we will ask the court to attach the personal salaries of the LCBSL board of directors.”Ludhiana’s new municipal commissioner, Ojaswi Alankar, claimed to have no knowledge of the impending auction. “I will discuss the matter with our legal team and attempt to resolve it,” Alankar said.
