Central govt could recommend Metro fare discounts for students, seniors
NEW DELHI: The Central government is likely to recommend concessions for students and senior citizens in metro fares, Union minister of state for urban development Hardeep Singh Puri told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
“It is my view, after having studied this issue for about three months or so, that it should be possible for the government to recommend concessional fares for senior citizens and students, but the fixation of those fares is not done by the government,” Puri said.
Puri was responding to a query from member Balbhadra Majhi in the Question Hour. Majhi had cited the example of the Kolkata Metro, which Puri reminded the House is run by the Indian Railways while the other metro fares are fixed by independent statutory bodies called ‘fare fixation committees’.
“It was with great wisdom that the fare fixation structure of the metro was insulated from the competitive and populist politics which normally governments can succumb to,” Puri said.
Puri said that Delhi Metro’s fare fixation committee in its report in September 2016, had said it had considered a system of concessional fare. “But they found that they were not technologically ready at that point of time… I believe now that the government could be in a position to recommend concessional fares for senior citizens and that we could make this recommendation to the fare fixation committee,” he said.
“I may tell the House that in the next few months whenever the next fare fixation committee is established, I think, in the case of the Mumbai Metro — because the high court has thrown that out — we would be happy to make that recommendation,” he said.