Maharashtra government wants BEST bus canteens with Shiv Thali

This picture has been used for representational purposes

The Maharashtra government has asked the BEST Undertaking to provide two BEST buses with staff as mobile canteens to serve their pet project of Shiv Bhojan Thali at Rs 10.

A note issued to the undertaking states that the government would provide subsidy for the thali which would contain rice, dal, one vegetable, and two chapatis. The BEST already has mobile staff canteens in place and two more buses would now be added to the fleet to serve Shiv Bhojan Thalis.

A BEST official said the undertaking would soon work out a plan about its implementation.

The Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress led government launched the much-awaited Shiv Bhojan Thali for Rs 10 on Sunday, January 26. The project has been started at two locations in Mumbai on a pilot basis - Nair Hospital in Mumbai Central and Bandra Collector Office and was inaugurated by Maharashtra Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray at Bandra.

As per the BEST archives, it was sometime in the 1960s that the BEST mobile canteens came on the scene in Mumbai. It was then that one of the iconic Leyland Tiger Cub buses was converted into one. The layout of the canteen included a kitchen platform and a washbasin.

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