Who Gets to Ride? Delhi’s Pink Ticket Scheme Faces Policy Shift Under BJP

For many women like Urmila, the hugely popular free bus rides, a cornerstone of AAP’s welfare agenda, were critical in bringing down household expenses. Five years since its launch, more than 150 crore Pink Tickets have been issued, and according to the 2024-25 Delhi Budget, 11 lakh women took these free bus rides every day. The tickets were issued by the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System, which operates cluster buses. The Delhi government reimbursed Rs. 10 per ticket every month. This year, Rs. 44 lakh has been earmarked for the scheme, an increase from Rs. 39.98 lakh in the 2024-25 budget.

‘Safer spaces’

For Pranavi, a student who moved to Delhi from Visakhapatnam, the scheme was a financial lifeline. “As a student, I’m constantly broke, so I prefer taking the bus instead of the metro,” she says. A 2024 study by Greenpeace India found that one in four women who were now using buses in Delhi had only started doing so after the introduction of the Pink Ticket scheme. “There has been a clear increase in women’s ridership. The perception of buses as safer spaces has also improved,” Aakiz Farooq, a climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace India, tells Frontline.

The study also found that many women were redirecting the transport money they saved toward household expenses, healthcare, their personal needs, and even leisure activities. “A significant number of working women in Delhi belong to lower-income groups and can’t afford to spend Rs. 30-40 one way on the metro,” adds Farooq.

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But now, the scheme is under threat of being drastically modified under the newly elected BJP government led by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta; indications of this were evident in the very first Budget unveiled by her. The Pink Tickets will soon be replaced with a card-based system available only to Delhi residents.

This shift has sparked concerns among commuters, especially working-class women, students from other cities, and migrant workers who rely on public transport for affordable mobility. Many fear that this new restriction will disproportionately impact non-Delhi residents who contribute to the city’s workforce and economy.

While presenting her maiden budget, Chief Minister Gupta said that all previous welfare schemes will continue, but added that there was corruption in the ticketing system or “pink corruption” as she termed it. The entire system would be digitised, she added. Gupta claimed that against every 100 tickets, 400 tickets were billed. To combat this, a new system would be introduced in Delhi where women could travel on any bus, as many times as they wanted, using a single travel card, eliminating the need for physical tickets.

The BJP’s decision to restrict eligibility only to Delhi’s women residents would impact thousands of women commuters, especially migrants, daily wagers, and those from neighbouring areas such as Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, and Faridabad.

Safina, a tailor, who migrated from Aligarh to East Delhi’s Seelampur, home to a significant working-class population, tells Frontline: “I live in a rented flat and do not have a Delhi address. Most people in my area are not originally from Delhi but have been living here for work. Women like me, we clean Delhi’s homes, stitch clothes, cook food, but suddenly, we are not Delhi residents? This is not right.”

A struggle for students

Students and young professionals from outside Delhi, who do not have a permanent Delhi address either, are also anxious about the change. Ananya, a UPSC aspirant from Ranchi and who is pursuing her postgraduation at Delhi University, says, “I live in a paying guest accommodation in Mukherjee Nagar, but I don’t have a Delhi address proof. If this new rule is implemented, students like me will struggle. My coaching centre is just three stops away and I save Rs.50 each time I use the bus. Being a student in a big city like Delhi means that most of my money will go towards transportation”.  

During the Budget session, the findings from the Comptroller and Auditor General audit report on the DTC were also discussed, and Gupta claimed that the transport body had suffered a loss of Rs.70,471 crore under the AAP government. She criticised the party for turning what was once a profitable department into a loss-making one. According to her, only 468 out of 814 bus routes were being operated, and the number of buses had decreased from 4,344 to 3,937. The BJP government, she said, was focused on bringing the DTC back into profitability and argued that issuing travel cards for women instead of pink tickets would increase transparency and eliminate misuse of funds. 

After the AAP government introduced free public bus transport for women, States such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Punjab, Telangana, and Rajasthan have implemented similar initiatives. It was also an election promise by Maha Vikas Aghadi in the recent Maharashtra election.

Despite its transformative potential, there have indeed been challenges to this scheme. Concerns about financial viability have been raised in Karnataka, and the scheme has been dismissed as “freebies” for women; irregular bus schedules, inadequate bus infrastructure (such as missing bus shelters) remain significant obstacles to women.

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The BJP’s proposed shift to a digital card-based system—exclusive to Delhi residents—is particularly worrying, given that Delhi has the second-highest population of inter-State migrants in India, according to the 2011 Census: The capital is after all a hub of economic and educational opportunities.

AAP has questioned the BJP’s broader commitment to public welfare. Its MLA Sanjeev Jha criticised the government for failing to uphold existing schemes, stating, “The BJP had promised to continue all public welfare schemes initiated by the previous government—so why are Mohalla Clinics shutting down? Women are not receiving pink tickets in buses anymore. Instead of playing the blame game, the BJP should use this budget to honour the promises made to the people.”

As the debate over welfare schemes rages, a larger question emerges: Who gets to claim Delhi as “home”, and who gets left behind in the government’s shifting policies?