The Indian Railways on Monday hiked the basic fares for passenger train services across different categories of travel class. The new fares, which will be applicable from July 1, will be applicable on all train services, including Vande Bharat, Rajdhani, Tejas Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto, Amrit Bharat, Tejas, Garib Rath, Gatimaan, among others, the railways ministry said in notification.
The fare increase will cover all the popular segments such as Second Class (1 paisa increase per passenger kilometer), Sleeper Class (1 paisa), AC 3 Tier (2 paisa), and AC 2 Tier (2 paisa). Though services like suburban (single journey) and season tickets (suburban and non-suburban) have been excluded from the latest hikes.
While most of the classes have witnessed flat increase, the fares for the second class (ordinary non-AC) service have been hiked in a staggered manner: half paisa per kilometre subject to no increase up to 500 km, followed by increase of Rs 5 for a distance between 501 and 1,500 km, Rs 10 for 1,501-2,500 km, and Rs 15 for 2,501-3,000 km.
Excluding the second class (ordinary non-AC) service, the railways is expected to garner additional revenues of Rs 1,444 crore in FY26, based on the FY26 budget’s passenger traffic projections. In FY26, the railways is expected to earn Rs 92,800 crore, which will be 22.5% higher than FY24 revenues of Rs 75,750 crore. In addition, the railways is projecting a passenger traffic of 7.57 billion in FY26 by logging in 1,310.6 billion passenger kms.
The ministry said that there will be no change in ancillary charges such as reservation fees, superfast surcharges, and other charges. Moreover, the GST will continue to be levied as per applicable rates, and fare rounding principles will be used as per the existing norms.
“The tickets issued before July 1 will remain valid at the existing fare without any fare adjustment. PRS (passenger reservation system), UTS (unreserved ticketing system), and manual ticketing systems are being updated accordingly,” the statement said.
The increase in passenger fares, which have come after a gap of five years, is going to marginally improve the operational performance of the national transporter. Historically, the “profitable” freight segment has been cross-subsidising the losses on the passenger side. In April this year, the railways ministry said that it’s providing concessions of 46% to every passenger.
Besides operational performance, experts believe that fare rationalisation could likely improve the passenger services with additional revenues being used to improve safety, punctuality, hygiene, and sustain investments in new-age rolling stock and stations.
On Sunday, the ministry had announced the revamp of its PRS facility for easier handling of ticket-related enquiries and to increase the ticket booking capacity. Under the upgraded system, which will be launched in December 2025, the railways will be able to process 150,000 ticket bookings per minute, up from 32,000 bookings in the current system. Similarly, the ticket enquiry capacity will also rise from 400,000 enquiries per minute to over 4 million enquiries per minute under the new PRS.