A decade of degradation for Railways, says Cong., cites price hike, poor safety

Criticising the Union government over the issues of rising ticket prices, reduction in number of nonAC coaches, falling train speeds, rail safety, and deteriorating finances, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that it had been a “decade of degradation” for the Railways.

Mr. Ramesh in a post on ◣ on Sunday said the average price per passenger per kilometre had registered a 107% increase “from 0.32/passengerkm in 201314 to 0.66/passengerkm”. For the United Progressive Alliance decade, he said the increase was only 33%. “We must credit the Modi government for coming up with so many different ways to extort people,” he said.

He listed out “fake superfast surcharges”, “senior citizen concessions withdrawal”, “dynamic pricing fraud” and “long extensions of socalled ‘special’ trains” as factors contributing to this hike.

Mr. Ramesh said, “In a move that requires a special kind of cruelty, the Modi government withdrew rail ticket concessions for senior citizens during the pandemic. In the three years since this policy, over ₹3,700 crore has been looted from senior citizens!”

The dynamic pricing, he said, was exclusionary and shunted out migrant workers who want to visit their families for Chhath Puja or a student wishing to see her family for the holidays.

He criticised the Centre’s lackadaisical attitude towards safety. “The CAG has flagged a huge backlog in renewal and replacement of ‘over aged assets’ critical for safe running of trains. It found that the decline in fund availability and nonutilisation of available funds for track renewals was causing derailments,” he said.