New Delhi:
Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has not raised passenger fares in his Rail Budget; despite emphasising on the big losses the Railways is making, pegged at Rs 24,500 crore for this year.
He has, however, proposed to raise a fuel surcharge of just under 5 per cent on railway freight traffic and has also proposed an increase in supplementary charges for superfast trains like Rajdhanis and Shatabdis and charges on reservations and cancellations. Passenger fares were raised by 21 per cent last month, but much part of the expected additional revenue of about Rs 6000 crore was wiped out by the increase in the price of deisel, which sent the fuel bill of the Railways soaring. (
Read: full text of Pawan Bansal's speech)
As Mr Bansal finished his speech, the BSE Sensex was trading almost 225 points down and the Nifty was at three month low.
The Minister began presenting his first Rail Budget with a thank you to his political mentors, some poetry and flat statistics to say that unless the Railways cuts losses and begins to make money, it cannot provide best value to customers and play its part in the nation's growth effectively.
His task at hand, he said, was to raise Rs 95,000 crore in the next four years of the 12th five-year plan, which called for setting higher targets for expanding the rail network. "Indian railways must remain financially sustainable. The number of passenger trains has increased from 8000 in 2001 to over 12000 in 2012 - yet losses continue to mount. They are estimated to be Rs 24,000 cr in 2012-13," Mr Bansal said, adding that scarcity of resources and a thin spread of funds continued to be a problem.
Having said that, the minister pledged his commitment to passenger safety and promised to "work towards a zero accident situation." A resource crunch he said could not be an excuse for substandard services, the minister said and promised to improve passenger amenities with a sweetly timed verse in Hindi to emphasise that he was attempting not to make noise but to bring change.
He announced a revamp of the e-ticketing system by the end of this year, free wi-fi on some trains and allowing train bookings on mobile phones.
Stressing on safety for women, a matter of public debate in the last few months, Mr Bansal acceded to a demand made even by his wife Madhu Bansal, for a security helpline for women in distress to call.
He has also announced 26 new trains.