Punjab Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring has promised to regularise the services of all temporary drivers and conductors in the state transport department if the Congress forms the government after the 2027 Assembly elections, putting the status of the public bus workforce at the centre of the state’s transport debate.
Warring made the promise during the eighth session of his live interaction programme, ‘Warring with Warriors’, on Sunday. He said he regretted being unable to regularise temporary transport staff during his 111-day tenure as Punjab’s transport minister and committed to taking up the issue if his party returns to power.
The announcement concerns drivers and conductors working on a temporary basis in the state transport department. Regularisation would affect their employment status, but Warring did not provide details on the number of workers covered, the financial cost, the eligibility criteria or the administrative process that would be followed if the promise is implemented.
Warring also alleged that a “transport mafia” involving a powerful political family and its associates had monopolised parts of the sector. According to his claim, private buses were manipulating routes, timings and permits in a manner that disadvantaged government buses. The allegations were made during the political interaction and were not independently established in the supplied report.
He claimed that private buses were operating 99,000 additional kilometres every day through illegal route extensions, with 60,000 kilometres attributed to buses belonging to the same family. The figures relate to alleged route extensions and were presented by Warring as evidence of practices affecting the state-run transport system.
Warring further claimed that action against such practices, along with higher taxes on certain private buses, helped increase government transport revenue by ₹7.75 crore within 15 days during his period as transport minister. The report does not specify the period in which the increase was recorded, the routes involved or whether the revenue change was independently audited.
The dispute places two connected issues before Punjab’s public transport administration: the employment conditions of temporary drivers and conductors, and the regulation of private bus operations that share routes with government services. State transport authorities are responsible for route permits, service operations, taxation and workforce administration, making any regularisation decision dependent on policy, staffing and budgetary processes.
Warring’s promise is conditional on the Congress returning to power after the 2027 Assembly elections. No government order, departmental notification or implementation timeline accompanying the proposed regularisation was cited in the report. The next steps would therefore depend on the election outcome and any formal decision by a future state government.
