Nine years after Srinagar lost its city bus service, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami revived it on Saturday, 31 October 2026 — flagging off a bus packed with councillors at Shriyanta Tapu, Srinagar, Pauri Garhwal, and delivering a burst of civic development worth ₹9.13 crore across nine schemes in a single visit.

A bus return nine years in the making

The relaunch of the city bus service was the most visceral symbol of the day. Srinagar residents had been waiting nearly a decade for reliable intra-city public transport, and Dhami personally flagged off the first bus — a gesture that drew loud crowds of women, elders, and young people who turned out to welcome him at the town's entry. The revival speaks directly to a longstanding gap in urban mobility for a town that sits at the crossroads of the Char Dham pilgrimage route.

'Sashakt Bahna, Sashakt Uttarakhand' — cheques and health kits for SHGs

The development push was paired with a welfare centrepiece. Through the state's 'Sashakt Bahna, Sashakt Uttarakhand' ('Empowered Sisters, Empowered Uttarakhand') programme, Dhami distributed incentive cheques worth ₹2,01,530 to women's self-help groups (SHGs), alongside health and hygiene kits to 51 'Paryavaran Mitras' — women appointed as environment-community liaison workers. The programme extends a policy lineage of rural SHG support that Uttarakhand has operated since the early 2000s, now sharpened with a branding push under the current state government.

Green infrastructure and civic works inaugurated

On the infrastructure side, Dhami inaugurated and laid foundation stones for projects spanning solid waste management and disposal facilities, a rain-water harvesting park named Swargiya Ranjit Singh Bhandari Vatika, road and drain construction, Lakshminarayan Park beautification, and broader civic amenity upgrades under Nagar Nigam Srinagar. The day also saw the inauguration of an EV charging station in Srinagar — a nod toward greener urban transport in a Himalayan town where air quality and pilgrimage-season congestion are growing concerns.

Rail corridor, Char Dham roads, and Srinagar's strategic position

Dhami framed the local investments within a larger connectivity arc. He highlighted that the Char Dham All Weather Road — the central government's flagship Himalayan highway project initiated around 2016 — has its main hub in Srinagar itself. The Rishikesh-Karnprayag Railway Line, he said, is progressing at pace and will include a station at Srinagar, promising direct rail access to a community that has long relied on winding mountain roads. Both projects, he noted, are delivering tangible returns already through a surge in Char Dham Yatra footfall that benefits local livelihoods.

When the CM stepped off protocol

A quieter moment cut through the ribbon-cutting: near a college gate, Dhami spotted students, stepped out of his official motorcade unannounced, and spent time talking with them — asking about their lives, their concerns. The students, visibly surprised, crowded around him with evident enthusiasm. It was an unscripted beat in an otherwise programme-heavy day, and it travelled fastest on social media.

Cabinet Ministers Dr. Dhan Singh Rawat, Satpal Maharaj, and Bharat Chaudhary, along with Mayor Aarti Bhandari, District Panchayat President Rachna Butola, and District Magistrate Swati S. Bhadauria were present at the event.

For Srinagar — a Garhwal town carrying pilgrimage economy ambitions and a backlog of municipal demands — Saturday's programme was less a ceremony and more a claim: that the infrastructure cycle is finally turning in its favour.