The celebrations of the Sankranti festival brought along the biggest problems as well as the biggest opportunities for the transport companies in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. On the one hand, APSRTC faced a lot of backlash for its drastic reduction of services; on the other, TSRTC received kudos for putting up thousands of special buses to Andhra Pradesh, thus becoming a principal mover in holiday travel.

The bulk of fliers during the time of Sankranti are going from Hyderabad to various sites in Andhra Pradesh. Historically, APSRTC has been operating over 2,000 special buses on these routes during the festival. However, the corporation’s move to operate just 200 special buses from Hyderabad drew a lot of criticism and was contrary to the previous trend.

Opposition voices and passenger groups alleged that the reduction created space for private travel operators to dominate the market. The travelers claimed that the private bus operators increased their fare five to six times during the festival season resulting in a massive exploitation of the travelers. Also, it was alleged that certain leaders of the ruling coalition were working with private travel operators, but there was no official confirmation about it.

Initially, the APSRTC took some time to acknowledge the public displeasure, but then it issued a very brief statement saying that the Sankranti special services would be operated as usual, without giving any route-wise or service-wise details, thus, the criticism got stronger over the fact that the move helped the private operators indirectly.

In contrast, the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) was very eager to serve the festival demand. They understood that Hyderabad was the focal point for people travelling for Sankranti, and therefore, they offered 6,430 special bus services from Hyderabad to different parts of Andhra Pradesh.

People travelling at the major bus stations like Vijayawada indicated that there was a lot of demand for the TSRTC buses which clearly showed the demand-supply gap created by the APSRTC. The whole situation has once more raised concerns about the planning for the festive season, the preparedness of public transport, and the regulation of private travel operators during peak seasons.