New Delhi:Railway Ministry said that the Railways has not been charging any extra fare from the passengers and issued a clarification that reports published in media was misleading and not based on facts.
The Ministry said that festival or holiday special trains were started as per the long standing practice to clear the rush and the fare for such trains has been kept little higher since 2015. There was ‘nothing new’ and this has been an established practice.
It may be noted that Passenger operations have always been subsidized by railways. Railways bear loss for travel by passenger.
“Not only this, Railways has taken special care about the travel by those travelling by lowest fare in trains so that even in Covid times they bear the least burden”, the Rail Ministry officials said adding that besides other classes, the trains have large number of sleeper class coaches which has the lowest fare in the reserved category.
The Railway Ministry also said that 40 percent of the passengers have travelled in sleeper class in much better traveling conditions than pre covid, unreserved travelling situations and as per the policy, the sleeper class passengers, the special fare charges is not more than Rs 15.
Even during challenging times of Covid, Indian Railways has operationalized almost 60 percent of the Mail/Express trains as compared to the pre lock down times and 77 percent of these special trains have fares of regular trains. Only around 250 trains daily have been running as trains with special fares.
Total 1058 Mail/Express, 4807 suburban services and 188 passenger trains have been are presently in operation average on a daily basis.
They also said that many trains are being run in spite of low occupancy for the benefit of people.(UNI)