New Delhi: Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday informed Parliament not to expect concessions in train fares for senior citizens and sportspersons to be restored anytime soon adding that such concessions to passengers "weighs heavily" on the national transporter, as reported by the news agency PTI.
"The railways is already bearing more than 50 per cent of the cost of travel, on an average, for all passengers, including senior citizens, on account of lower fare structure for passenger services," said the minister in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.
"Apart from this, due to COVID-19, passenger earnings for the last two years is less in comparison to 2019-20. These have long-term impact on the financial health of the railways. Cost of granting concessions weighs heavily on the railways, hence extending scope of concessions to all categories of passengers, including senior citizens, is not desirable.
"In spite of these challenges, Indian Railways has continued concession in fare to four categories of persons with disabilities, 11 categories of patients and students," the minister said.
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He additionally informed that the number of senior citizen passengers who travelled in reserved classes during 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 are 6.18 crore, 1.90 crore and 5.55 crore, respectively.
The minister also attributed the decline in going of the number of senior citizen passengers during 2020-21 and 2021-22 because of the pandemic.
"In 2019-20, 22.62 lakh senior citizen passengers had opted to give up concession scheme in passenger fare and gave up concessions for the sustained development of Railways with better facilities," he said.
He likewise said that the railways have renounced Rs 4,794 crore as revenue foregone because of concessions in passenger fare to senior citizen passengers during 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 for both reserved and unreserved categories.
(With PTI inputs)