Bengaluru: Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy has said that there is no proposal before the government to increase KSRTC bus fares.
Speaking to The New Indian Express, Ramalinga Reddy said that the state finance department had recently proposed to the state bus corporations KSRTC, KKRTC, NWKRTC and BMTC to form a control committee to decide on the fare hike, but the committee has not been formed yet.
A one-man committee set up by the previous government in 2022 under the chairmanship of former officer MR Srinivas Murthy recommended steps to restructure and revive the state road transport corporations. Among other important recommendations, the one-man committee had urged the formation of a Public Transport Fare Committee to revise the ticket fares of government buses. Recently the state finance department has also proposed the same.
Reddy explained that once the regulatory committee is set up, it will function like the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC), adding that KERC will call for hike in electricity rates after analyzing the reports of Eskoms.
Although diesel price, spare parts of vehicles, salary of employees and operational expenses are increasing year by year, we have not revised the ticket price. After setting up the control committee, it will take all the factors into consideration and recommend the ticket price revision. However, he mentioned that the state government is unlikely to increase ticket prices immediately.