Government had to hike railway fares as maintenance of public services comes at a cost, information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari said on Thursday.
"The maintenance of standards in public services comes at a cost. That cost has to be defrayed in a public private partnership," Tewari tweeted on social networking site twitter.
On Wednesday, railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal had announced an across-the-board hike in fares of all classes from midnight of January 21 to net an additional Rs. 6,600 crore a year.
The announcement, which was a made only about a month ahead of the Railway budget, is the first such increase in Railway fares in nearly a decade.