January 07, 2025 11:09 pm (IST)
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Govt agrees partial rollback on train fare hike
New Delhi, June 24 (IBNS): Days after announcing a hike in train fares, the Centre on Tuesday agreed to a partial rollback, giving small relief to commuters.
The new fares, following the hike, was scheduled to come to effect from Wednesday.
"In the existing system, the MST is 17-15 times the value of a single journey ticket for the same distance slab whereas the circular indicated that MSR fare would be now equivalent to 30 single journey fare for the same distance slab. Inclusive of the 10% fare hike and 4.2% FAC, the new MST fares ranged 1.7 times to 3.5 times of the old MST fare," read a government statement.
"Despite the fact that MSTs are highly subsidized, Ministry of Railway has now decided to modify the fair revision circular and hence a decision has been taken to increase the cost of existing MST fare by only 14.2% inclusive of FAC, i.e., the Monthly Season Tickets for both suburban and non-suburban shall now be charged at 14.2% over the existing rates rounded off as per extant instructions," it said.
The government said: "Further in the second class ordinary suburban single journey fares, it was noticed that upto a distance of 80 kms, there was increase in 3 of the slabs only and because of rounding off, the increase was coming to more than 14.2%. A view was therefore taken to avoid any hike in fares upto a distance of 80 kms. Thus there is no change in fare for second class suburban travelers for a distance upto 80 kms."
The government said the revised fares in the unreserved segment will come into force from June 28.
In the reserved segment, the revised fares shall come into effect from Wednesday as was notified earlier.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government earlier in the day made it clear that it will not rollback rail fare hike despite protests from its ally Shiv Sena.
Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs from Maharashtra met Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda in New Delhi over the issue on Tuesday.
Maharashtra BJP MLA Vinod Tawde said the government has said it will reconsider the fare hike for Mumbai.
"Meet wid Rail Min Gowda was a success. Conveyed him d feelings of commuters. He assured to reconsider #RailFareHike. M sure it wl b lowered," tweeted Tawde.
Earlier on Monday night, he had said: "Hoping for the positive response from Union Govt on #Mumbai #RailFareHike in the interest of 65 Lakh commuters."
"Proposed #RailFareHike is too taxing for Mumbaikars. We hv requested Rajnath Singhji to reconsider d proposal," he posted earlier on Twitter.
With not even a month in office, Modi's government on Friday increased Railway fares with the the passenger fare being hiked by 14.2 percent.
The freight rates have been hiked by 6.5 percent.
New fares will be effective from June 25.
This is the first steep hike in Railway fares in many years.
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