Indian Railways earns Rs 9,000 crore from cancelled, waitlisted tickets in 3 years

Indian Railways has managed to earn more than Rs 9,000 crore from ticket cancellation charges and non-cancellation of waitlisted tickets in three years, said the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) in response to an RTI.

CRIS said that between January 1, 2017 to January 31, 2020, more than 9.5 crore passengers with non-cancelled waitlisted tickets, led national transporter to a revenue of around Rs 4,335 crore.

The Railways earned approximately Rs 4,684 crore from cancellation fees of confirmed tickets in the same period, the RTI revealed.

The RTI response also said that in both segments earning was maximum from sleeper class, followed by Third AC.

Between 2017 and 2020, more than 145 crore people purchased tickets online, while around 74 crore passengers went to counters for tickets.

Indian Railways had increased passenger fares by 1 paisa per km for non-AC trains, by 2 paise per km in express trains and 4 paise per km for travel in AC classes from January 1, 2020.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said that the hike was expected to generate additional annual earnings of Rs 2,312 crore.

On the other hand, Indian Railways has increased its targeted passenger earnings to Rs 61,000 crore in next financial year, and freight earnings to Rs 1.47 lakh crore as per the pink book tabled in Parliament on February 5, 2020.

The national transporter had increased its new targets at a time when it was struggling to meet passenger earnings targets for the financial year 2019-20.

Goyal said, "There is a shortfall of revenue of Rs 3,064. 26 crore up to December 2019 when compared to the corresponding period last year."

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