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Indian Railways takes people for a ride
The Indian Railways is taking passengers for a ride. Rounding off tickets to the next higher multiple of Rs 5 is how the transportation behemoth is making crores. A rough estimate puts the collection to over Rs 2,400 crore per annum.
​Hyderabad: The Indian Railways is taking passengers for a ride. Rounding off tickets to the next higher multiple of Rs 5 is how the transportation behemoth is making crores. A rough estimate puts the collection to over Rs 2,400 crore per annum.
In reply to an RTI query, the Railway Board confirmed that fare values ending in rupees 2,3 or 4 would be rounded off to Rs 5 and those ending in rupees 7,8 or 9 to Rs 10.
What is interesting is it also mentions that lower multiples of rupees 5, i.e 11, 21, 31 would become 10, 20 and 30. A cursory look at the exhaustive fare chart shows that there is not a single instance of a train fare ending with 11, 21, 31 and so forth. The rounding off fares is not applicable to second class and ordinary suburban. The MMTS fares in Hyderabad are just Rs 5 and Rs 10.
A passenger travelling a distance of 136-140 km in 3AC will have to pay Rs 428. The fare in Rajdhani 3AC is Rs 438. But passengers would have to pay Rs 430 and Rs 440 respectively after rounding off.
If one takes an average of Rs 3 for each ticket, with 72 seats in each coach and 1,800-2,400 tickets per train, invariably the Railways is making a neat Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,000 from each train every day.
With close to 12,000 trains running daily, the cash-strapped Railways is netting a cool Rs 6 crore to Rs 7 crore on a daily basis which works out to Rs 180 crore to Rs 240 crore per month and Rs 2,200 crore to Rs2,500 crore per year.
Ravi M, a frequent traveller to Pune, asked, “If any grocer or a trader charges even Re 1 extra over and above the MRP mentioned on the products, he is liable to be punished as per the MRTP Act. But why Railways is let off?”
“Railway Ministry and Railway Board has issued orders and it was not under his purview to comment on the matter,” said a senior official of South Central Railway.
Quite a majority of rail users are unaware about the rounding off of fares. N B V Murthy, a retired postal employee, said, “The rounding of fares has been in practice for almost two years. People who do group booking are in for a greater loss.
The fare chart only shows basic fare which is calculated based on km but there are other charges such as reservation, superfast and other charges.”
It is interesting to note that majority of the fares end with 7, 8 and 9. Sample this: A person travelling in 2AC for a distance of 105 km, the basic fare is Rs 593; for a distance of 1,030 km the fare is Rs 1,677 and for 1,500 km the fare stands at Rs 2,096.
