Kolhapur: The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) has discontinued its Pune-Kolhapur premium air-conditioned Shivneri service within three months after resuming it on December 23, 2016 owing to poor response from passengers and high ticket rates.Earlier, a proposal sent by the Kolhapur division for revising ticket rates was rejected by the corporation's central office in Mumbai. The state transport corporation had resumed the service after a gap of two years in December last year. The service was getting poor response due to rate of tickets and inconvenient timings.An official in the Pune division, on condition of anonymity, said, "We stopped the service on March 7 after receiving poor response from the passengers. Even the proposal of the ticket rates was rejected by the central office. Therefore, it was not possible to run the service."Stand in-charge of Central Bus Stand (CBS) Kolhapur said, "The MSRTC resumed the bus service in December 2016 after gap of two years. Since first day, the bus service was receiving poor response from the passengers. Therefore, the Pune division decided to shut down the service."A MSRTC official, on the condition of anonymity, said, "The MSRTC is solely responsible for closure of the premium bus service. It closed the well doing bus service in May 2014 to transfer vehicles to the Dadar route. The MSRTC lost its passengers to other private operators. When service was started again in December, it failed to attract passengers due to various reasons from ticket rates to inconvenient timings. The ticket cost was Rs 630 while private operators were offering Rs 400 for the same route."

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