BENGALURU: In the wake of public outcry over the Metro fare hike based on alleged miscalculations, Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya has written to Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) seeking urgent rectification of what he termed as “glaring mathematical errors” in the fare revision.
Commenting on the “mistakes” committed by BMRCL, the MP said, “Even high school students do better mathematical calculations than what BMRCL did for fare revision.” He pointed out how BMRCL had sought a 105% increase in the fares from the FFC based on the wrong calculation, while the actual increase would be around 50-55% on the correct application of the formula provided in the FFC report.
Highlighting a particular instance of miscalculation, Surya said, “The maintenance and administration cost was shown to have increased by a staggering 366%, whereas the actual increase should be around 118.5%.”
He said this error likely occurred due to an incorrect base-year calculation, where BMRCL deviated from the formula used in the report and adopted a value “alien to the available data.” As a result, the percentage increase in maintenance and administration costs, which should have been 23.7%, was incorrectly computed as 73.16%, thereby inflating the overall fare hike to an illogical 105.15%.
Surya said the Fare Fixation Committee, instead of re-examining BMRCL’s submission, merely noted that 105.15% was “on the higher side” and arbitrarily reduced it to 51.55% without providing any recorded reasoning.
He also stressed that BMRCL implemented fares exceeding even the committee’s recommendations, resulting in hikes of up to 82% on certain frequently used routes. The MP urged BMRCL to revisit and correct the fare structure.
