In a little-noticed circular in February 2013, just a few weeks before the railways budget was presented, Indian Railways silently announced that they would start rounding up ticket fares to the nearest multiple of five. For example, if a ticket cost ₹122, it would be rounded up to ₹125. It would never be rounded down. In the railways budget that followed, no fare hikes were announced. The fare tables are not in multiples of five, so the rounding-up policy was essentially an across-the-board fare hike implemented silently.
Now, the Railway Ministry has told MediaNama in response to an RTI application that it doesn’t know how much revenue was earned by rounding up fares.