From 2011 to 2016 to 2022 runs the story : Of dusts and road circus
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: March 30, 2022 -

Opened in 2016, now ISBT looks like a deserted haunted place on March 28 2022 :: Pix - TSE

Officially inaugurated in 2011, just ahead of the 2012 Assembly election and finally made functional only in 2016, nearly five years after its inauguration, the Inter State Bus Terminus located plumb in the heart of Imphal city at Kabow Leikai, Khuman Lampak, has seen many stories to its present dilapidated state.

In between making it officially functional and its inauguration with five years between them, people also saw how the ISBT was turned into some sort of a huge public toilet with The Sangai Express carrying a report in 2013 with the tell tale signs of human excreta strewn all over the place.

Tough to say if the readers would remember the particular story, but to the veterans here at The Sangai Express, it was a day to remember for the clear, vivid pictures of the human excreta strewn all over the picture spoilt their morning cuppa with some of their children even nearly throwing up while having their quick morning meal to be in time for school.

Cut to the present and things does not seem to have changed much.

It was during the first and second wave of the Covid pandemic that the ISBT became the destination of all incoming trucks and the heavy loads they brought along with them and the failure to tend to the damages wrought on the campus of the terminus today means that no inter-State buses, leaving or coming back from outside the State have deemed it fit to go inside the complex.

Such is the situation today, that even ticket counters for vehicles such as Wingers bound for places like Ukhrul have been shut inside the terminus and have been moved outside.

The most the Wingers do is come near the gate of the terminus to pick and drop passengers.

This is the dry season, meaning the rain is yet to come, so one can imagine the smoke of dust that is kicked up all over due to the coming and going of these inter-district vehicles and one can imagine the state of the people living near the ISBT.

Inter-State buses on the other hand no longer enter the terminus. They park and pick up passengers from the western end of the road at AOC, that is in front of Tampha Hotel and the parked buses stretch all the way up to the locked eastern gate of DM University.

What does this say ? For one the parked buses sure add to the traffic chaos adding more to the road circus that is played out by mindless drivers who have no qualms about honking their way to glory !

Talk about dust and noise pollution and this is the scene that one sees on one of the most important and busiest stretches of roads in Imphal.

It is just 6 years since the ISBT was thrown open for public use and where is it today ? This is a question which the Government should be asking itself.

Or if it was a case of the Covid pandemic tying their hands from doing anything, then now that the situation has improved considerably, something ought to be done.

The Sangai Express has always had reservation about how the ISBT came to be located plumb in the heart of the capital city.

Imphal must perhaps be the only place where the ISBT is located inside its heart.

Or was it a case of failing to look one or even two years ahead before the decision to locate the ISBT at its present address was taken ?

Either way, this still does not warrant that it should be left to its fate of infamy.

Today ISBT comes nowhere near the understanding of a bus terminus but a Dust Terminus. Come the rain and it might become a Slush Terminus.