Indian Railways: Indian Railways has earned additional revenue of over Rs 2,800 crore from child passengers in the last seven years by amending the child travel fare norms. This information has come to light through an RTI.
Information received from the Center for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act revealed that the revised norms have led to an earning of Rs 560 crore in the 2022-23 financial year alone, making it the highest earning year.
CRIS works under the Ministry of Railways to solve IT related issues in key areas like ticketing and passenger, freight services, train traffic control and operations. Let us tell you that on March 31, 2016, the Ministry had announced that Railways will charge full fare from children below 5 years of age and 12 years of age like adults. However, it has been said that if a seat is booked separately in the coach reserved for children, then this fare will be charged. The revised norms were implemented from April 21, 2016.
This big change happened:
Earlier, Railways used to give separate berths to children aged between 5 to 12 years and charged only half the journey fare. However, children are still allowed to travel on half fare under the revised norms, but they will not get separate berths or seats and will have to travel with an adult in the same seat. In such a situation, if you are thinking that children’s seats will be booked at half the rate, then this is now a thing of the past. Now Railways will take full amount for providing full seats.
