Mumbai : Bringing some good news for Metro users in the city, the Bombay High Court on Thursday in an interim order stayed the proposal to hike the Mumbai Metro fares. The HC bench headed by Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Gautam Patel has granted the stay till January 29, 2016, until the final hearing of the petition filed by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).
The MMRDA has filed a writ petition seeking stay on the steep fare structure recommended by the Fare Fixation Committee. MMRDA in its petition has stated that the hike would irreversibly damage the character of Metro as mass rapid transport.
Earlier, the Reliance Infra-promoted Mumbai Metro One Pvt Ltd (MMOPL) had announced a fare hike of Rs 5 to be enforced from December 1, but later deferred it till today’s hearing. On the interim order Additional Metropolitan Commissioner, Sanjay Sethi said, “We were asking for the stay on fare hike, so that’s what the Court has said today that whatever recommendations were made by the FFC those cannot be implemented for now. Now the final hearing is on January 29.”
The FFC had allowed MMOPL to levy a fare band of Rs 10 to Rs 110. At present, the fares for the 11.4 km Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar line are Rs 10, 20, 30 and 40. The MMOPL had proposed to raise the fares and add a new fare slab making the fare structure Rs 10, 20, 25, 35 and 45.
The tussle between the city’s development authority and MMOPL over the fare hike has been ongoing with the latter stating that it is incurring huge operational losses and needs to either levy the FFC-recommended fares or needs capital and operational subsidies from the Government of Maharashtra to keep the fare affordable. Meanwhile, MMRDA has contended this stand citing the Concession Agreement that was signed between the two parties wherein the fares structure was decided at Rs 9-11-13. “We were basically challenging the maximum fare of Rs 40 as being too high. A tariff of Rs 110 is extremely unreasonable fare and will be unaffordable for commuters,” a senior MMRDA official said.
Meanwhile, sources add that the FFC recommended fares are steep for MMOPL to levy in one go as it would directly impact the footfall on the Metro line.
