The Railway Tariff Authority (RTA) will become operational by the end of this year. ?Nominations for the top five posts for the authority have come and shortlisting will be done after the elections,? Railway Board chairman Arunendra Kumar said.
The Board will be providing its projections to the authority by middle of this year after which it will review the fares. According to sources, over two dozen nominations have come for the five RTA member posts. The members are reputed economists or from a similar background.
A committee headed by the cabinet secretary and the railway board chairman as its members will select the RTA members. ?Members would be from different backgrounds. Though the cabinet decision doesn?t make the recommendations of the authority binding, the railway board will have to ordinarily accept them.?
As per the cabinet decision, the recommendations of RTA would be accepted by the railways and, if the national transporter wishes to digress from RTA-proposed tariffs, it would have to send a ?reasoned note? for reconsideration within a specified period.
The RTA will help reduce the level of cross-subsidisation (of passenger traffic) gradually. In the last financial year, the railways made a loss of Rs 26,000 crore from the passenger segment. Its operating ratio stood at 90.4% last fiscal, whereas a healthy situation is this ratio to be 75%.