The Government had to hike railway fares as the maintenance of public services comes at a cost, Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari said today.
“The maintenance of standards in public services comes at a cost. That cost has to be defrayed in a public private partnership,” Tewari tweeted on social networking site Twitter.
Yesterday, Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal had announced an across-the-board hike in the fares of all classes from midnight of January 21 to net an additional Rs 6,600 crore a year.
The announcement, which was a made only about a month ahead of the Railway Budget, is the first such increase in railway fares in nearly a decade.