Rail fare hike will net Rs 400cr

The first class ticket in New Delhi-Mumbai Rajdhani will now cost '65 more, while it would be '40 more in 2-AC and '30 in 3-AC, said additional member (commercial) of the railway board Amitabh Lal. He added that for Nizamuddin-Benga-luru Rajdhani the hike will be '95 for first AC, '55 for 2-AC and '35 for 3-AC. In case of New Delhi-Lucknow Shatabdi the hike will amount to '25 in executive chair and '10 in chair-car. For New Delhi-Bhopal Shatabdi, the hike will translate to '35 in executive chair and '15 in chair-car, Mr Lal said. In case of sleeper class, Mr Lal, while giving an example, said that the increase will be '15 for a ticket in a train from New Delhi to Trivandrum, which is a 3,060-km route. For short distance like from Bengaluru to Mysore, the increase in sleeper class will be '3. Mr Lal clarified that the fare hike is on the basic fare in case of sleeper class, while it’s on whole ticket in other classes. “We will garner '400 crores from the passenger fare hike in the remaining six months of the financial year, while it will be '750 crores from the increased freight tariff. The Railways on the other hand was faced with an additional burden of '1,200 crores in this period from the increased fuel cost,” said Mr Lal, who added that there has been an increase of 7.50 per cent in diesel cost and 15.50 per cent in the case of electrical traction from February 1 to July 31. Former Union railways minister Dinesh Trivedi had brought in the concept of FAC every six months in his Rail Budget speech, which first came into effect on April 1, 2013. But the Railways at that time had spared passenger fare, as it was recently hiked in January. The Railways had recently also imposed a 15 per cent levy in the form of busy season charge on all commodities from October 1.