The Congress on Monday demanded the resignation of railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw over the latest fare hike and a decline in safety and quality of food served on trains.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X: “Second railway fare hike in a single year, days before the Union Budget. With no separate Railway Budget, accountability has vanished.”
He cited the 2.18 lakh rail mishap deaths from 2014 to 2023, implementation of the Kavach safety system on just 1 per cent of trains, 3.16 lakh railway job vacancies, non-utilisation of funds for training, and the denial of breaks to train drivers.
At a news conference, Congress spokesman Ajoy Kumar said: “We demand that the first thing Ashwini Vaishnaw, the ‘Reel Minister’, should do is to implement the safety system
across the entire railway network in the country.... Because either the food provided by the railways is not fit to eat, or there is no safety, and despite this, Modiji is not sacking his railway minister. We request that Vaishnawji resign on his own.”
“For the common public, there will be an increase of ₹100 to ₹200 in their train fares. And this is for lower class, AC, and everyone. When our government was in power, the charge per kilometre was 24 paise in 2003. When we left the government, it had become 32 paise. Thirty per cent increase over 10 years...
around 3 per cent every year. Now it has become 67 paise, a 107 per cent increase,” he added.
The Centre on Sunday announced that train fares would go up by 1 paise per km for ordinary class journey beyond 215km, and 2 paise per km for non-AC classes of mail/express trains and AC classes of all trains from December 26. Vaishnaw told Parliament earlier this month that rail mishaps had reduced by 90 per cent after 2014.