The ‘Dynamic’ fare system in Railways is the system in which the fare is fixed according to the demand. This fare system is applicable in trains like Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains.
These three categories of passengers are usually last minute travellers who avail these services by paying premium charges.
In response to an RTI filed by Chandrashekhar Gaur, a resident of Madhya Pradesh, the Railways said that it has collected Rs 240 crore from ‘dynamic’ fares, Rs 353 crore from Tatkal tickets and Rs 89 crore from premium Tatkal charges in the financial year 2021-22 till September. Earn.
In the financial year 2019-20 when there were no restrictions on train operations, the Railways earned Rs 1,313 crore from ‘dynamic’ fares, Rs 1,669 crore from Tatkal tickets and Rs 603 crore from premium Tatkal tickets.
This figure of the Ministry of Railways comes a month after the comments of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways.
The committee, in its remarks, had said that the charges levied on Tatkal tickets are “somewhat unreasonable” and impose a huge burden on passengers, especially those who are financially weak and need to travel on Tatkal to visit their families and relatives. are forced to.
The Committee desired that the Ministry should take measures for the fare proportionate to the distance traveled.
According to news agency PTI, the Tatkal ticket fee has been fixed at the rate of 10 percent of the basic fare for second class and 30 percent of the minimum and maximum basic fare for all other classes. At the same time, tickets are sold up to 50 percent of the Tatkal quota in some trains using the premium scheme and dynamic fare system introduced in 2014.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee had also said that the dynamic fare appears to be ‘discriminatory’ in view of the fact that the fares of Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto are already higher in comparison to other mail and express trains. The committee further said that in some cases these fares are higher or almost equal to those of budget airlines.
The Railway Ministry data also shows that over 52 lakh passengers who were on the waiting list after finalizing the seat reservation list could not travel by trains in the first six months of the current financial year.
Similarly, out of about 32,50,039 PNR numbers, 52,96,741 passengers had booked tickets. These tickets were automatically canceled as they were waiting till September of this financial year after preparation of reservation charts.
Not only this, Indian Railways did not start any new train service during the COVID epidemic affected 2020-21. Although it introduced 144 new trains in 2019-20, 266 in 2018-2019, 170 in 2017-2018 and 223 train services in 2016-2017.
(with input from news agency language)
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