Breaking away from the populism of his predecessors, including Lalu Prasad and Mamata Banerjee, Bansal, who was made the Railway Minister in October last, told a press conference that the decision to hike the fares was “imperative” as lack of revision in the last 10 years has had a “telling effect” on the railway finances.
Dinesh Trivedi, who succeeded his party chief Banerjee, made a bold decision to hike fares in the Budget in February, 2012 to mop up an additional Rs 4000 crore but paid the price when he was made to resign by his party Trinamool Congress which was opposed to it.
Today's decision also covered services like Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto type trains. However, it exempted platform tickets from any hike.
Bansal also proposed to do away with the practice of levying development charge on passenger tickets and all the chargeable fares will in future be in multiples of five.
As a result of the proposed hike, ordinary Second Class suburban fares for a distance of 35 km will go up by Rs 2 from Rs 8 to Rs 10, while in the non-suburban trains it will go up by Rs 5 for an average distance of 135 km.
In Sleeper Class, the increase would mean a hike of Rs 50 for a distance of 770 km from Rs 270 to Rs 320. In the case of AC Chair Car, for a distance of 387 km, the increase would be Rs 40 from Rs 345 to Rs 385.
In the case of AC Three Tier, for a distance of 717 km, the fare will go up from Rs 724 to Rs 800, an increase of Rs 76.
