Passenger fares across the Indian Railways likely to come down by about 15%

Curbs on cooked food, over-the-counter ticket sales remain

Passenger fares across the Indian Railways are expected to come down by around 15 per cent with the normalization of services. According to officials in the know, other offerings such as cooked food and cheaper platform tickets may not resume immediately in the light of measures to continue containing the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The special trains that were initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic are being replaced by normal train services. This would result in lowering of passenger fares to the tune of around 15 per cent across the board,” a senior Rail Ministry official told Business Standard. Fares of those trains that were tagged 'special' will come down. There are around 1700 such trains.

The Railways ferried 1180.19 million passengers during the first six months of the current financial year, up from 69.88 million during the same months of the previous financial year. Passenger earnings in the financial year (up to September 2021) stood at Rs 15,434.18 crore, up from Rs 1,258.74 crore till September 2020.

Comparably, in the pre-pandemic period (2019-20), the Railway had ferried 4173.52 million passengers and earned Rs 26,642.73 crore till September 2019.

On November 12, the Railway Board directed Zonal Railways to drop the ‘special’ tag for mail and express trains and to revert to pre-pandemic ticket prices with immediate effect. It is expected that around 1,700 trains will be restored over the coming few days.

According to officials in the know, other measures that were taken to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic would continue to be in place. These include restrictions on over-the-counter sale of tickets, not serving cooked food on trains and higher rates for platform tickets.

“The aim of higher rates for platform tickets is to continue preventing crowding at Railway Stations. Since the COVID-19 pandemic is still around, we will continue to restrict over-the-counter sale of tickets or on allowing serving of cooked food on the Indian Railways,” the official added.

The Railways was facing criticism for higher fares that were being charged during the pandemic. This was justified as a measure to prevent unnecessary travel during the pandemic months.

To normalize operations, the Railway said the passenger reservation system (PRS) will be shut down for six hours during the lean business hours of the night for next 7 days. An official statement said this is being done to enable up-gradation of system data and updating of new train numbers.

The move to trim passenger fares is expected to adversely impact railway earnings that were reporting higher numbers compared to the pandemic year. But passenger footfall remains much behind pre-pandemic levels.