25.6.14

Rolled back!


In a massive relief for lakhs of Mumbai's suburban railway commuters, the Modi government announced a partial rollback of the unprecedented rail fare hike. Besides not hiking second-class daily ticket fares up to 80 km, first-class daily tickets and first and second-class season tickets will now be increased by a flat 14.2%.
The unprecedented hike announced on June 20, ranging between 100% and 187%, had drawn a barrage of criticism from over 75 lakh Mumbaikars who commute by local trains. The new fares will be effective starting Saturday .
The rollback was announced by the Railway Board after a delegation of BJP and Shiv Sena MPs from Mumbai met railway minister Sadanand Gowda in the capital urging him to cancel the hike. With Maharashtra set to go to the polls in October, the Centre took note of their criticism that the hike was too steep.
The increase of 100%--in some cases, nearly 200%--had generated widespread anger among Mumbaikars and led to a huge rush to buy season tickets before the new fares kicked in. The Railways had decided to tweak the formula for computing the season ticket fare, saying the monthly fare would, from now on, be charged on the basis of 30 single journeys instead of the earlier 15-journeys formula. With the rollback, this revised formula stands discarded. However, the increase of 14.2% in passenger fares for long-distance travel and 6.5% in freight services remains unchanged and would be effective from Tuesday night. The Railways hoped to garner around Rs.9,200 crore from the fare hike. The rollback comes as a setback, officials said, as the major loss in the passenger segment is due to highly subsidized suburban fares.
A Railway official said a chance to bring in reforms had been lost, and populism had won again.
The Bombay high court on Tuesday refused to stay the hike in the local train fares, observing that it was a policy matter and interim relief was out of the question.
A bench of Justices Abhay Oka and A S Chandurkar was hearing a PIL filed by consumer group Mumbai Grahak Panchayat through its chairperson Shirish Deshpande to challenge the “exorbitant“ rail fare hike. “This is a policy decision. Where is the question of granting interim relief? Let us hear the matter on July 3, when it is fixed for regular hearing,“ it said. It will take up Ketan Tirodkar's PIL also that day.


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