The National Conference rode to power in 2024 promising free bus travel for women. On April 1, 2025, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah launched the “Zero-Ticket Travel Initiative” with fanfare: free rides for all women and girls on JKRTC buses and Srinagar-Jammu Smart City e-buses. He assured full reimbursement to the corporation and “no financial burden.”
Eight months later, the promise lies in tatters.
The government has already incurred losses exceeding ₹80 crore. Reimbursements to JKRTC remain unpaid, spare parts are unavailable, and over a dozen e-buses are grounded. In Srinagar, daily women passengers once hit 34,000; today buses are overcrowded, unsafe, and often off the road. Private operators are bleeding and threatening to abandon routes. Rural women, supposedly the biggest beneficiaries, are the first to lose service as buses are pulled back to cut costs.
This was never sustainable. There was no financial modelling, no contingency fund, no phased rollout—just a poll promise rushed into action and now quietly choking to death. The same government that bragged “we have budgeted for it” cannot pay its own transport corporation.
We have seen this movie before: Karnataka’s Shakti scheme began with applause and is now ₹8,000+ crore in the red. Jammu and Kashmir simply replayed the same script on a smaller, more fragile economy.
Women of Jammu and Kashmir do not need symbolic free rides that disappear halfway. They need reliable, safe, affordable buses that reach their villages and workplaces every single day, year after year.
Enough of the drama. Scrap the unpayable free-for-all. Replace it with targeted, means-tested subsidies and a realistic fare structure that keeps buses running instead of rotting in depots.
Election promises are cheap. Governing is expensive. The sooner the National Conference admits it overpromised and under-delivered, the sooner real, lasting solutions can begin.
Free rides were never free. The bill has arrived, and once again, it is the people who pay.
