Now, you may have to pay more if you are travelling by train, Here is why

The cabinet gave its nod to setting up of an independent regulatory body for recommending passenger and freight fares.

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a proposal for setting up a Rail Development Authority which will determine goods and passenger tariffs.

The passenger fares are presently highly subsidised but with the setting up of the authority could alter the passenger fares. The regulator will ensure efficiency and performance standards of the Indian Railways besides global best practices and benchmarking so as to bring transparency.

The RDA however, will work within the parameters of the Railway Act, 1989 and its major functions will be tariff determination and recommending principles for classification of commodities, framing principles for social service obligation and guidelines for track access charge.

The authority will have a chairman and four members and can engage experts from relevant areas. The chairman and the members of RDA will have a term of five years. An initial corpus of Rs 50 crores will be provided for setting up the organisation.

Earlier, in the Railway Budget 2015-16, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu had pitched for setting up of RDA which is important for the purpose of orderly development of infrastructure enabling competition and protection of customer interest.

Countries such as Britain, Russia, US, Australia, Germany have been using rail regulatory structure in some form or the other.

OneIndia News