Bathinda, Dec. 8 -- Two years after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government announced Rs.100 crore for a new inter-state bus terminus (ISBT) in Bathinda city, the project has failed to make any progress due to a sharp division of opinion between two groups of the ruling dispensation in the district, people aware of the development said. According to people privy to development, the authorities have still not shortlisted probable sites for the mega development project. Presently, the bus stand is located in the heart of the city on Talwandi Sabo Road, and it leads to traffic congestion. Officials, who didn't wish to be named, said that the Bathinda Improvement Trust (BIT) was tasked with constructing the ISBT. Officials said that they were waiting for an official go-ahead from the Punjab chief minister's office (CMO). At a political event in Maur town of Bathinda on December 17, 2023, CM Bhagwant Mann and national convener of the AAP Arvind Kejriwal had announced a package of Rs.1,125 crore for development activities in Bathinda. Kejriwal had announced that Rs.100 crore had been sanctioned to meet the long-pending demand to build a new bus stand. During the Republic Day function in Bathinda on January 26, 2023, CM Mann had first announced the construction of the ultramodern bus stand on the city outskirts to solve the traffic problem of the city. As per the proposal, two bus stands would have a division on connectivity to areas to ease the pressure of buses on the city roads. Earlier, the ISBT site was proposed near the defunct Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant on the Bathinda-Malout road. A section of private transporters and shopkeepers formed the 'Bus Stand Bachao Sangharsh Committee' in April this year, claiming the project would affect the business of local traders and cause inconvenience to the daily commuters. AAP legislator from Bathinda Urban, Jagroop Singh Gill, has been supporting the new bus stand to improve traffic management. But those opposing got a fillip when Gill's political bete noire and Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) president Amarjit Mehta, an AAP leader, expressed solidarity with them. In August, AAP MLAs from Bathinda district, Baljinder Kaur, Balkar Sidhu, Sukhvir Singh Maiserkhana and Master Jagsir Singh, too, chipped in against Gill's stand and wrote to the CM, requesting him to drop the proposal in view of the protests against it. The demand to relocate the ISBT was first raised in 2008. The project to shift the ISBT was conceptualised in 2008 during the then SAD-BJP government, and Bathinda Lok Sabha MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal had laid the foundation stone of the project at Patel Nagar on the city's outskirts in 2016. But the project did not materialise after the Bathinda military station objected to the construction in its vicinity. Later, the Patel Nagar site was shelved....