Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh. File.
| Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA
It has been a “decade of degradation” for the Indian Railways, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said, criticising the Union government over five issues — rising ticket prices, reduction in number of non-AC coaches, falling train speeds, imperiling rail safety, and deteriorating overall finances.
Mr. Ramesh in a long post on X on Sunday said the average price per passenger per kilometre has registered a 107% increase “from 0.32/passenger-km in 2013-14 to 0.66/passenger-km”. For the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) decade, he pointed out that the increase was only 33%. “We must credit the Modi government for coming up with so many different ways to extort India’s people,” Mr. Ramesh said.
He listed out “fake superfast surcharges”, “senior citizen concessions withdrawal”, “dynamic pricing fraud” and “long extensions of so-called ‘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 COVID-19 pandemic. Senior citizens who may be relying on trains for pilgrimage, to visit their children, or to avail medical treatment, are now being charged much higher fares. In the 3 years since this policy, over Rs. 3,700 crore has been looted from senior citizens!”
The dynamic pricing, he said, is exclusionary and shunts out migrant workers who want to visit their family for Chhath Puja or a student wishing to see her family for the holidays.
Mr. Ramesh also accused the government of “anti-poor mindset” when it comes to constructing rail infrastructure. “While the UPA spent crores on high-quality services for the common man, such as the Garib Rath trains, the Modi government has shifted spending to expensive AC coaches — even though 95.3% of train passengers ride sleeper and general classes,” he said, underlining that more than 33% of seats added in the last 10 years went to AC 3-tier coaches. The schedule for the Railways Coach Factory for 2023-25 has just 1,142 general and sleeper coaches against 3,044 air-conditioned coaches on order.
The trains are no longer punctual too, he said pointing to a CAG report to support his claim. The report revealed that the number of mail and express trains that were on time declined from 79% in 2012-13 to 69.23% in 2018-19.
He also criticised the government’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 non-utilisation of available funds for track renewals was causing derailments,” Mr. Ramesh said.
