MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Monday quashed the proposal to hike fares of Mumbai Metro. A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice Mahesh Sonak struck down a report of the Fare Fixation Committee (FFC) as well as the proposal by R-Infra-run Mumbai Metro One Private Limited (MMOPL) to hike fares as “defective”.
The FFC had allowed a price band of Rs 10 to Rs 110 for the Mumbai Metro in July 2015 and had recently proposed to raise the fare by Rs 5.
The court also asked the central government to notify a new fare fixation committee to resolve the issue of fare to be charged for the Metro within three months.
However, the bench made it clear that the MMOPL would continue to charge the present fares for now and asked them to submit a statement on the “excess fee charged from commuters”.
Presently, the fares are levied between Rs 10 to Rs 40 for the 11.4-km Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar route.
Earlier in 2015, the high court had stayed the proposal to hike fares in an interim order, which was challenged by the MMOPL in the Supreme Court.
MMOPL justified the fare hike due to the escalation of project costs. It claimed that the “Metro was bleeding financially” and was suffering a loss of Rs 90 lakhs per day.
A spokesperson from MMOPL had claimed that in the last three years it had suffered a loss of around Rs 1000 crore. MMRDA cited the concession agreement which said that initial fares were to be in the range of Rs 9-13. It further said that hike in fares had led to a reduction in the number of passengers that use the Metro.