Mumbai: Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) gets a green signal from the High Court to increase Metro fare to Rs 10, 20, 30 and 40 from January 9. The High Court dismissed the appeal filed by MMRDA seeking interim stay on increase in fare till fare fixation committee is constituted but court observed operators are incurring a loss of Rs 85 lakh daily and increasing fare will only reduce loss to Rs 62 lakh a day.
The High Court also rejected MMRDA plea to grant stay on this order so that they could challenge it in Apex Court but HC did not allow this. The division bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice B P Colabawalla is hearing an appeal filed by the government agency 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.
Meanwhile, a statement by RInfra and MMOPL (a joint venture between RInfra and MMRDA) said the promotional fares of Rs 10, Rs 15 and Rs 20 will continue till January 8. MMRDA's counsel, Aspi Chenoy, argued that they were bound by contractual obligation and could not charge more.
According to MMRDA, the consortium had agreed on a structure whereby the fares would be Rs 9 (up to 3 km), Rs 11 (from 3 to 8 km) and Rs 13 (for more than 8 km). MMOPL, however, set the initial fares at Rs 10, Rs 20, Rs 30 and Rs 40. Janak Dwarkadas, counsel for the R-Infra, 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 estimated 4.1 lakh. Chenoy gave a comparative study of fares charged by Metro Rails at Delhi and Hyderabad.
To this, Dwarkadas replied that the charges of electricity were much higher in Mumbai. J J Bhat, counsel for MMOPL, argued that it had asked the authorities in November 2013 to constitute a fare Fixation Committee (FFC). "Till the time the Metro Rail commenced in June 2014, several reminders were sent. However, no steps were taken in that regard," argued Bhat.
