Twitter
Advertisement

Bombay High Court to fix Metro fares on Thursday

Latest News
article-main
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

The Bombay high court will decide on Thursday whether the RInfra and Mumbai Metro One Private Ltd (MMOPL) can have an initial tariff structure of Rs10, Rs20, Rs30 and Rs40 for the Mumbai metro.

A division bench of chief justice Mohit Shah and justice BP Colabawalla are hearing an appeal filed by MMRDA challenging a single-bench order of the court that denied the state government the right to decide the fares. MMRDA had also challenged the new regular fares declared by Reliance Infra.

A statement made by RInfra and MMOPL (a joint venture between RInfra and MMRDA) said that the promotional fares of Rs 10, Rs 15 and Rs 20 will continue till Thursday.

MMRDA’s counsel, Aspi Chenoy, argued that they were bound by contractual obligation and hence they could not charge more fares. According to MMRDA, the consortium had agreed on a structure whereby
the fares would be Rs9 (up to 3km), Rs11 (from 3 to 8km) and Rs13 (for more than 8km).

MMOPL, however, set the initial fares at Rs10, Rs20, Rs30 and Rs40. Janak Dwarkadas, counsel for the RInfra, justified the fares saying that they have been incurring loss of Rs 85 lakh per day as only 2.65 lakh commuters are travelling by Metro as compared to an estimated 4.1 lakh commuters per day.

Chenoy gave a comparative study of fares charged by metro rails in Delhi and Hyderabad. To this Dwarkadas retorted that the charges of electricity were much higher in Mumbai than the other cities.

JJ Bhat, counsel for MMOPL, argued that they had sent a correspondence to authorities concerned way back in November 2013 to constitute a fare Fixation Committee (FFC). “Till the time the Metro Rail Commenced
in June 2014, several reminders were sent for setting up of FFC. However, no steps were taken in that regard,” argued Bhat.

After the matter came to HC, in July, the union government was given time till November 30, 2014, to set up the FFC. The deadline was then extended to December 31, 2014. Then, once again, the Union government
had sought time till January 31, 2015, a request which was rejected by the HC.

Pending the appeal, MMOPL had initially agreed to charge promotional fares till July 31. This deadline was extended to September 30 and then to December 31. Finally it has extended its promotional fares
till January 8, 2015.

The FFC has still not been formed. Once it is constituted, it would take about three months to fix the fares.

Justice RD Dhanuka had, on June 24, 2014, dismissed MMRDA’s petition saying that MMOPL had the right to decide the fares till the fare committee arrived at a decision.

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement