Indian railways is preparing to charge user fee for passengers as like airports at its modern railway stations. As per sources, this fee would be included with the ticket and the levy will only be charged at the stations those would be revamped with private participation. In coming two to three years some of these stations will be operational.
IRSDC, a wing of railways, which works for redevelopment and modernisation of stations, has invited bids for development of four stations Amritsar, Nagpur , Gwalior and Sabarmati. Already it handed over two stations Habibganj in Madhya Pradesh and Gandhi Nagar in Gujarat to private parties for development.
Ministry of railways is going to rejuvenate all the railways stations in the country for which huge funs is needed to complete such big projects. So the provision for user fees has been considered to make the scheme attractive for builders for partnership. The visitors won’t be charged the user fee through the platform tickets. The passengers will have to pay the uses fee and have to be collected while booking tickets.
According to the plan, a private players will be offered 60-years licence of the station area and build area on lease and 99 years for residential development of the station land.
Earlier railway ministry has decided to prioritise the modernisation of 50 railway stations drawing from the example of privatisation of six airports.
