According to sources and according to an order issued on tuesday on the New Year's eve, the railways announced fare hike across its network, excluding suburban trains, effective from january 1, 2020. Meanwhile suburban fares remain unchanged, ordinary non-AC, non-suburban fares were increased by 1 paise per km of journey. Furthermore the railways also announced a two paise/km hike in fares of mail/express non-AC trains and four paise/km hike in the fares of AC classes.
Apparently the fare hike is also applicable to premium trains such as Shatabdi, Rajdhani and Duronto and in the Delhi-Kolkata Rajdhani, which covers a distance of 1,447 km, the hike at the rate of 4 paise per km will be around Rs 58. Further according to the order, there will not be any change in the reservation fee and superfast charge and the hike in fares will not be applicable to tickets already booked.
Moreover the last such hike was announced in 2014-2015 when fares of all classes of trains were raised by 14.2 per cent and freight charges by 6.5 per cent. Perhaps since then, the railways introduced the flexi-fare scheme which significantly raised fares on select trains and launched trains like Vande Bharat Express and tejas Express which have relatively higher fares. Trains with dynamic pricing like Suvidha Express were also introduced. Perhaps the railways in a statement said the revenue generated by the "marginal" increase in fare will be used for the modernisation of the network.
