Soon after Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge’s speech ended in Parliament, Arunendra Kumar, Chairman, Railway Board, Rajendra Kashyap, Director-Finance, and Devi Prasad Pande, Member-Traffic, dwelled on the finer points of the interim budget. Edited excerpts:

Has the pricing formula been fixed for tickets on the new premium trains?

Kumar : On the Delhi-Mumbai sector, where the concept was introduced last December, it was plus 200 per cent (of the Tatkal fare), but we never reached that band. We finished at 100 per cent.

Pande : The pricing must be demand-driven, it cannot be ridiculous.

How does the Railways expect to generate ₹6,000 crore from public-private partnership projects (PPPs)?

Kashyap : PPP is a very narrow term. The term we use is ‘extra budgetary resources’, of which the main component continues to be Indian Railway Finance Corporation. The other source is money from State Governments from building rail over-bridges and under-bridges.

A lot of money is already flowing in, which is not being captured. When we construct rail over-bridges, there is State support, which is 50 per cent of the cost. The Rail Land Development Authority has already given ₹937 crore. Some lines are being constructed along with State governments. All this is not coming from the Consolidated Fund of India.

Even at the revised estimates stage, we kept investment coming from PPPs at ₹6,000 crore. We may not achieve this, but we did not want to lower the target. We will come close to it.

Is the Railways fighting shy of a Rail Tariff Authority?

Kumar: We recommended that such an authority was needed. We said if you want to set it up without legislation, it should be an advisory body, whose advice will be ordinarily accepted. If its advice is not accepted, then we will have to give reasons.

February 28 is the last date for nomination of members to the authority, after which it will take at least one year to become operational.

Advising on fares is only a small part of what the authority will do. It will also have to keep in mind how to develop the sector, how costing should be done among other things. On that basis, it will also advise the fare structure.

Is the Railways in favour of foreign direct investment?

Kumar: We will accept it in ports and factories, not in train operations.

Passenger numbers are not picking up. What makes you project higher numbers next year?

Pande: After an analysis, we found that there was a distance band where the fall in numbers was very sharp.

This was a fairly price-sensitive band. The distance, say, of 0-50 km, is fairly price-sensitive. Even a ₹1 increase in the fuel adjustment component had people shifting away from the Railways.

There was also a lot of ticket-less travel, but that was not limited to this band. When we intensified checks, window sales picked up for about seven days, which means that the effect of the ticket check lasts for about a week.

In some distance bands, it lasted between one-to-three days. Passengers wanted to buy tickets but we were unable to sell on time.

So, we thought of a new scheme of outsourcing ticket-selling, which is being introduced now.

That is why we got into automated ticket vending machines and coin-operated machines.

Now, we are working on the technology aspect to help us do ticket checking.

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