26 February 2002

MODERATE HIKE IN RAIL PASSENGER FARES AND FREIGHT TARIFF

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: After two years of passenger fare hike-free Railway Budgets, Nitish Kumar on Tuesday announced a moderate hike in both passenger fares and freight tariff effective from April 1 in the name of "rationalisation" that will yield a whopping Rs 1360 crores to cover up not only the shortfall of Rs 340 crores in receipts over expenditure but the entier shortage of funds for the Plan during 2002-2003.

Passenger fare hike affects all classes and will net Rs 910 crores to he Railways in the full year, though it is only minimal and in fact it is negative in some instances because of decrease of Re 1 or 2 for certain distances. The Rajdhani and Shatabdi travel, however, have been spared from any fare hike and there is also no increase in parcel and luggage rates.

The fare hike generally varies from a minimum of Re 1 to Rs 6 up to a distance of 341 km and goes up to Rs 35 in case of the second class mail/express journey of 2000 km and does not cross the double digit that is Rs 99 even for the farthest distance of travel by air-conditioned 2-tier or 3-tier journey.

Nitish Kumar spoke of reducing the relativity index for AC First Class from 1440 to 1400 saying it will improve utilisation and make this class of travel more competitive with Air travel. There is, however, no decrease but rather an increase even in the AC First Class travel except for very long distanc3es like 3062 km between Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram where it will now cost Rs 4798 instead of Rs 5072. Otherwise, the fare has gone up for most other distances except for only a few instances like in case of New Delhi-Jaipur it will be now Rs 1134, which is just Rs 4 less than the existing fare.

The Railway Minister, who was presenting his second budget to Parliament on Tuesday, has played the same trick of rationalisation of freight rates to rope in Rs 450 crores while not going for any across-the-board increase. He has rationalised the freight structure fo base class to remove anomalies while ensuring that it results in only minimal increase and in fact a marginal fall in case of certain distances.

As a result of the rationalisation, the fares for distances beyond 100 km for ordinary second class will be fixed at 55 per cent of the second class mail and express fares. Fares for second class monthly season tickets to be fixed equivalent to fares for 15 single journeys by ordinary second class instead of 10 single journeys and that means a whopping 50 per cent hike.

There will be no changes in the system of charging for quarterly season tickets, existing fare
Kumar said the relativity index for sleeper class mail and express trains will be increased from Rs 155 to Rs 160 and AC Chair car from Rs 300 to Rs 350.

In case of the freight rationalisation, the number of classes for different commodities has been reduced from 59 to 32 and the ratio of freight in highest class to lowest drops from 8 to 3.3. Nitish Kumar also abolished 25 anomalous classes.

Commodities of common use such as edible salt, fruits, vegetables, gur and jaggery, shakkar, certain items of edible oils, foodgrains, pulses, organic manures, Urea, Fodder and dry grass are proposed to be transported by the Railways at the lowest class.

There will also be marginal increase in rates of coal, iron ore and raw material to steel plants. But there will be marginal reduction in iron and steel, pig iron, cement and most petroleum products. END