Refund of ‘superfast’ surcharge on Tejas train should be made a norm

NOT MANY PASSENGERS WHO PAY THE SUPERFAST SURCHARGE KNOW THAT WHEN FIRST INTRODUCED IN THE LATE 1960S, THESE TRAINS WERE MEANT TO RUN AT A MAXIMUM PERMISSIBLE SPEED OF 110 KMS PER HOUR

And as a first step, they should start refunding at least the surcharge when these trains fail to attain even the so-called ‘superfast’ speeds or reach the destination late.

Not many passengers who pay the superfast surcharge know that when first introduced in the late 1960s, these trains were meant to run at a maximum permissible speed of 110 kms per hour, had very few stops and took you to your destination much faster than the express trains of those days. And the railways did not impose any surcharge for travel on these trains. This levy began in 1973., on the ground that the railways incurred additional expenditure in maintaining these coaches and tracks on account of their speed.

The decline however began from 1982- slowly their speeds began to decrease and the number of halts started to increase . So much so that by 1989, these trains chugged at 40-60 kms an hour and since their speed came down, the railways added more coaches, thereby earning additional revenue from these trains. At this juncture, the railways should have removed the fancy nomenclature as well as the surcharge because there was no justification for either.

Instead, the railways brought down the benchmark for superfast trains further and said the fastest train on a given track deserved the superfast crown ! Thus even trains that crawled at 38-40 kms an hour joined the rank of superfast trains!

Then in 1993, bowing to a direction from the apex consumer court, the railways re-defined superfast trains as those that attained a speed of 45 km on the metre gauge and 55 km on the broad gauge.

Of course even this criteria for ‘superfast’ was laughable, but the railways have been unabashedly adding more and more trains to the list and with it, levying the surcharge. So much so that from 35 super fast trains in 1984, their number rose to 62 in 1989 and 92 in 1992 and today, there must be more than a thousand in the superfast stable. ( the website e-train.info lists 1196 of them ).

Since their very classification and surcharge is based on their speed, it would be illegal on the part of the railways to retain the surcharge paid by the passengers, if any train does not attain that speed or reaches the destination late. Yet, railways do not have any policy of refunding the amount in such circumstances.

There is no data on such illegal collections, but one can get an idea from the report (No 4 of 2017) of the comptroller and Auditor General of India, whose test audit of 21 trains of north central and south central railway showed that during 2013-2014 to 2015-2016, they levied and collected Rs 11.17 crore superfast surcharge, even when the trains did not attain the average speed for a superfast train. And the CAG was only referring to 21 trains audited by them!