On the back of growing demand for low-floor buses from Delhi Transport Corporation and other state and local transport bodies after the stimulus provided by the Centre under the JNNURM scheme, commercial vehicle maker Ashok Leyland is ramping up production at its Alwar plant and gears up to start production of these buses at another plant in South India.

?Since 875 ultra low entry (ULE) buses have to be delivered to DTC in the current financial year and another 200-250 units to other state transport bodies, we are ramping up production at Alwar by 50% from 200 units a month to 300 units a month as well as start manufacturing such buses at our facility in south to cater to the demand of sates in southern India,” Rajiv Saharia, executive director (marketing), Ashok Leyland said.

According to Saharia, the facility in south near Tiruchirappalli, which is a tripartite agreement between Irizar, TVS and Ashok Leyland to originally manufacture luxury buses, will also manufacture 200 ULE buses in a month to meet the demand.

The company had secured Rs 480 crore contract for supply of the ULE buses from DTC earlier this year. The two parties had also signed Rs 710 crore contract for maintenance of the buses over a period of 12 years.

Major commercial vehicle makers are to deliver 2,200 buses to DTC this fiscal, of which Ashok Leyland has a contract for supply of 875 ULE buses, both AC and non-AC in the price range of Rs 49.9 lakh to Rs 59.3 lakh.

“Out of the 5,000 units that have been ordered by various state transport organisations under JNNURM, around 250 units would be ULE buses, over half of them are semi-low floor one step buses and the rest are semi low-floor buses with two steps. While the ULEs would be manufactured by Ashok Leyland, the company would only supply chassis for other buses,” Saharia added.

The company is planning to increase prices across all categories from the next fiscal to offset the rising commodity prices. “Steel prices are moving up and at the same time we are also facing increasing cost associated with technology due to the new emission requirements. As such the cost has to be passed on to the consumers,” Saharia said.

From April 2010, new emission norms will come into play under which all vehicles in 11 major cities across the country would need to have Bharat Stage (BS) IV compliant engines, while other cities would move from BS II to BS III.

(Travel for this story was sponsored by Ashok Leyland)