Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry, gave a clarification after the Congress party offered to pay for the train tickets of migrant workers.
Another amount of Rs 660 crore will be returned for around 3.9 million bookings made for travel between April 15 and May 3, they said
In a letter to his Cabinet colleague Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who had written to him on the issue, the Railway Minister said that instructions have been issued accordingly as a special case.
Railways said the move to hike prices of meals was to give passengers more variety and improve hygiene and quality of food
Operational cost of running passenger train services is increasing and the passenger fare is highly subsidised
Piyush Goyal also said that in the coming year, plans are being made to maximise utilisation of assets