Auto fare goes up by Rs 1.5/km, govt to announce date later
National capital has around 98,000 registered auto-rickshaws
NEW DELHI: The Delhi government on Friday passed the decision of hike in the auto fare by Rs 1.5/km. People in Delhi will now have to pay more for their travel by auto-rickshaw.
The Delhi Cabinet has approved the revised rates of auto-rickshaws from existing Rs 8 per km to Rs 9.5 per km, the transport minister said. Under the new auto tariff arrangement, auto-rickshaws will charge Rs 25 for the first 1.5 km instead of the existing limit of 2 km.
However, the date from which the new rates come into effect has not yet been decided. The AAP government will issue a notification to this effect soon, the minister said.
The waiting charge has been revised from 50 paise per minute to 75 paise per minute. Earlier, the waiting charges were applicable only in the case of a minimum of 15-minute stay. Now, that limit of 15 minutes has been done away with. The waiting charges will be applied when the vehicle is completely stationary or stuck in traffic or moving extremely slow, that is, at a speed less than 6kmph. The night charges and the luggage charges remain the same.
An 11-member committee was appointed by the Delhi government in November last year to decide the auto fare hike and the team submitted the report this year.
"We have received the recommendations of the committee and we will follow it," Gahlot told Millennium Post earlier.
However, this was not the first attempt of the AAP-led government to increase the auto fare but in 2016 also the government wanted to do the same which could not happen.
Delhi has nearly 98,000 registered auto-rickshaws which is also a strong vote base of the AAP. Political observers opined this step as a political step too.
"This was pending for a long time but to compete with the app based transport system we had to do this. But we took every party in confidence," said a senior official of the transport department.
However, a section of the Delhi based auto unions are not happy with the rise in fair. "This will not help us at all. People will anyway travel lesser in auto and after this decision, the auto travel will not be cheaper any more than uber travel so people will take Uber or Ola," said a member of auto union.
