Chennai: Political leaders including PMK founder S. Ramadoss and Tamil Maanila Congress leader G.K. Vasan on Thursday condemned the surge pricing announced by the Centre for three premium trains.
Ramadoss said the train fare for some of the trains would be higher than that for flght tickets and asked how the fares of trains could be higher since travelling flying by air would reduce the travel time.
This would only result in people preferring flights instead of trains. Since the bookings for trains take place in a faster rate, there could be big differences of fares between a passengers booking train tickets in the space of five minutes, he said.Already, middle and poor sections of people had been affected by higher chargres for special trains, he said.
Hiking ticket fares without taking action for maintaining cleanliness and punctuality would only lead to resentment among the people, Ramadoss said and sought withdrawal of surge pricing system.
Vasan said the burden of passengers should not be increased for the profit of railways since people had already been affected due to rise in prices of essential commodities.
The surge pricing would cause great difficulty for people during festival times. The BJP government should take action to withdraw the surge pricing since the courts had already rejected such pricing system.
