Hike fares to fund projects, Railways told

Rail fares may rise substantially with the Planning Commission raising a red flag over need to generate revenue to fund railways' two ambitious projects - high speed bullet trains and dedicated freight corridor. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 9, 2013, 02:59:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Rail fares may rise substantially with the Planning Commission raising a red flag over need to generate revenue to fund railways' two ambitious projects - high speed bullet trains and dedicated freight corridor.

Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia is said to have told railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal on Monday that the money required to build the freight corridor would be around Rs 1 lakh crore - almost four-time higher than the ministry initial estimate of Rs 27,000 crore.

Railways do not have internal resources to fund a project of such a magnitude. The government is not in a financial position to provide so much of money as finance minister P Chidambaram has already announced that allocations for different ministries would not be jacked substantially.

So, the plan panel, which allocated money to different ministries based on finance ministry's consent, wants railways to raise its own resources to fund the mega-project now delayed for years. And, the panel wants ministry to start preparations for increasing its financial kitty.

The way-out, according to the panel, is hike in rail fares across categories keeping in view the rising energy costs and ground realities. The panel officials say top officials of the railway ministry agree with their view and upward revision of rail fare can be expected soon.

The panel believes that the fare increase would also help to fund the high cost bullet trains, which the ministry wants to introduce in public private partnership mode by 2015. Seven corridors have been selected for conducting feasibility studies including Delhi-Mumbai rail-link.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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