Metro fare rise: High Court extends stay

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Thursday extended the interim stay on the proposed Mumbai Metro fare hike till August 22, while scheduling daily hearings on the matter from the same day.

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A division bench of HC, comprising Justices VM Kanade and MS Sonak, also asked the state government to file an affidavit clarifying its stand on the issue.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), an intervention application filed by Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam challenging the Fare Fixation Committee’s (FFC) and Reliance Infra-run Mumbai Metro One Private Limited’s (MMOPL) proposal to hike fares and also a PIL seeking reduction in existing fares and a restriction on MMOPL from leasing land as per concessionaire agreement.

While hearing all these together, when the intervener argued that MMOPL should stick to the rates fixed according to the concessionaire agreement by the state government, senior advocate Janak Dwarkadas, who was representing MMOPL, replied that the company was incurring losses up to Rs 1 crore each day.

“No government’s good wishes are running the Metro. It is operating with the capital Reliance Infra invested. MMRDA was to bring in Rs 1,500 crore but it ended up paying Rs 600 crore and then we had to take loans from several places,” said Dwarkadas.

Last year, MMOPL had proposed that fares be increased by up to Rs 5 from December 1, 2015. FFC too had approved a price band of Rs 10 to Rs 110 instead of the existing Rs 10 to Rs 40.

However, the HC, in an order issued on December 17, 2015, had put an interim stay on both the proposals.