BENGALURU: A public interest litigation (PIL), challenging the hike in Namma Metro ticket fare was dismissed by the Karnataka High Court. Sanath Kumar Shetty and two other residents from Bengaluru had filed the PIL, claiming that the 71% fare hike was too high and it violates fundamental rights of the user public. Seeking reassessing of fare fixation, the petitioners requested for a direction to the respondents not to exceed the hike beyond 25%.
They also sought directions for strict adherence to station-to-station fare fixation mechanism as per Section 33 of the Metro Railways (Operation and Maintenance) Act 2002. A division bench of Chief Justice NV Anjaria and Justice KV Aravind noted that there was no promise at any point of time not to increase the fare.
It is evident from Section 33 of the Act that the Metro Rail administration is empowered to fix the fares from time to time. It is done by the fare fixation committee constituted under Section 34. Fare fixation by the railway administration for the operation of Metro is a statutory exercise, the court said.
Noting that fare fixation is an expert exercise where a host of considerations, including technical and financial, would have applied, the court observed that it is not the domain of the court to delve into such aspects which are to be better considered by the fare fixation committee.