The Tamil Nadu government on Sunday revised the earlier hiked bus fares, following large scale protests by opposition parties and the general public, commuters & especially student as the January 19th announcement of hike in bus fare was “unprecedented”, "steep" and “unjustifiable”. But such reduction of bus fare was not implemented in Chennai. ordinary Buses plying in Chennai continued to collect the hiked fares instead of the revised, reduced rates, which is condemnable.    

TN Government recently revised the minimum fare for a normal city buses to Rs 4 from Rs 5. But yesterday, all the ordinary city buses continued to collect hiked minimum fare of Rs 5, instead of revised minimum fare of Rs 4. There were news reports that the reasons as explained by transport officials, behind non implementation of revised fare as announced by the government was due to collection of Rs 1 extra as Accident insurance cess. As per the TN Government’s Jan 19th announcement the hike in bus fare on town and moffusil buses will only cover the integrated component of accident insurance and toll fee and not for the city buses.

TN Government without notice extended the application of integrated component of accident insurance and collected Re 1 in addition to the minimum fare of Rs 4 from every commuter in ordinary  city buses. All the ordinary city buses plying in Chennai continue to collect the earlier hiked fares instead of the recent marginally revised fares.

It is fraudulent and unacceptable that, for ordinary city buses, despite revised marginal reduction on bus fare, a route covering a distance with 13 stages and 15 stages was charged only at hiked fare of Rs 15 and Rs 17 respectively, and therefore there is no actual reduction on hiked bus fare. Thus the commuters were denied of the relief sought after the revision of bus fares.

The benami, TN State Government should desist from cheating people. Instead, it should completely withdraw the fare hike and take steps to strengthen the transport corporations