By Jonathan Allen

NEW DELHI, July 12 (Reuters) - Commuters in the Indian capital are being forced to jostle harder than ever to get onto the city's dangerously overcrowded buses after a spate of deadly accidents spurred a crackdown on errant private bus operators.

Many people have been left stranded for hours on the kerb as buses fly past already crammed with passengers enduring the July heat and humidity.

Some commuters are flinging themselves at the moving vehicles in the hope of grabbing a foothold on the buses' exterior.

But at least three passengers lost their grip on Wednesday, hurting themselves seriously as they fell to the road, newspapers reported.

Commuting is rarely a pleasure in Delhi, but it suddenly got a lot worse this week after a series of deadly and widely reported accidents involving the city's Blue Line buses, run by private operators licensed by the local government.

Earlier this month a boy was crushed under the wheels of a Blue Line bus after it crashed into the scooter on which he was riding with his father, while another boy was killed when he got off a moving bus and fell beneath the wheels.

Following an outcry in the press, Delhi's Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said she planned to replace Blue Line buses with more state-operated vehicles, and authorities also started enforcing the law governing bus operators with renewed vigour.

Many Blue Line buses were impounded. But many more operators decided to simply stay off the roads, thinking it better to lose a few days' earnings than face stiffer penalties, said M. S. Upadhyaya, Delhi police's additional commissioner for traffic.

The result has been dangerous and maddening chaos.

"Can't you see for yourself?" said Vinay, a Delhi salesman, mopping sweat from his face half an hour into his wait for a bus. "I've been late for the office every day."

KILLERS

Delhi's Blue Line buses killed 59 of the 1,023 people who died on the city's roads in the first six months of this year, Upadhyaya said.

Eleven of the 59 died as they tried to get on or off a bus while it was still moving -- Blue Line bus drivers will often only briefly ease off the accelerator as they pass bus stops rather than coming to standstill, trying to maximise the number of journeys -- and the profits -- they make in a day.

Police have found a Blue Line bus in serious breach of regulations and ordered it to stop running on more than 6,000 occasions so far this year, Upadhyaya said.

Newspaper reports put the number of Blue Line buses at about 4,500, meaning that every single bus has on average been banned at least once this year.

Many buses are halted for lacking the mechanical limiter to keep its speed below the 40 kph (25 mph) limit, for having a driver without a full licence and government permit, or, like much of Delhi's traffic, for ignoring the rules of the road.

The press officer in Delhi's transport department said he did not know how many Blue Line and state buses were on the roads and how many operators ran them, and that he was unable to find out. Nor did he know what the government was doing to end the chaos.

Elsewhere, an angry mob burnt vehicles and threw stones at police in the eastern city of Patna on Thursday after a bus killed two children playing in the street, television reported. (Additional reporting by Manjusha Chatterjee and Onkar Pandey.)

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