In a relief to thousands of commuters, the Bombay High Court on Thursday stayed till January 29 the hike in train fares of the Versova— Ghatkopar Metro rail corridor proposed by the Mumbai Metro One (MMOPl), a subsidiary of Reliance Energy.
Hearing a petition filed by the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) challenging the proposed rail fare hikes, a HC bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka noted that the proposed increase in fares should not be implemented until the final hearing of the petition.
The High Court also admitted an intervening application filed by Mumbai Regional Congress Committee chief Sanjay Nirupam, challenging the hike. His plea will be heard along with the petition filed by MMRDA.
The MMRDA, which had commissioned the Mumbai Metro, has challenged the hikes proposed by MMOPl. On his part, Nirupam has alleged that the Union Government was facilitating private profiteering by allowing multiple fare hikes. He said that there should be a fare hike every four years, as per the agreement, and not frequently.
On November 27, the MMOPl announced “moderate increase” in fare, while claiming that it had kept the revised fare “significantly below the recommendations of the Fare Fixation Committee. The new fare structure was to come into effect from December 1, 2015.
The MMOPl announced increase in the monthly pass for passengers from `675 to `725 for short trips and from `900 to 950 for long trips.
Similarly, the MMOPl proposed fare per trip for the commuters holding Store Value Passes is just `2. This in essence means, , the new structure will have five slabs of `10, 20, 25, 35 and 45, instead of the earlier slabs of `10, 20, 30 and 40 The fare slabs per trip for the return journey token category have been similarly revamped from `10, 15, 25 and 30 earlier to ` 10, 20, 22.50, 30 and 35 now.