No proposal on free Metro ride: Centre

New Delhi: In what has landed the AAP government in an embarrassing situation, the Centre, on Thursday, said that it has not received any proposal from the city government over the proposed free rides for women in Delhi Metro.

Replying to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha, minister of state for housing and urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said that the Centre does not have any proposal for free rides for women in the Delhi Metro trains.

Reacting to the development, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal assured the people that the Metro rides would be free for women of the city.

To a question related to the scheme of free Metro travel for women, Mr Kejriwal said: “We don’t need to send any proposal to the Central government. Delhi government has decided to make Metro travel free for women by giving subsidy for the same. We legally don’t need to send proposal to the Central government. We wrote to the DMRC to send a proposal to us. We, in-principle, agree to the proposal sent by the Metro to us.”

A senior city administration official said that the government was going to bear the loss of revenue that the DMRC, DTC, and the cluster buses would face due to this decision. He said that city transport minister Kailash Gahlot has held a meeting with senior officials of the DMRC and asked them to submit a proposal on how they can facilitate free travel for women and what it would cost.

Both the Centre and the city government own 50 per cent stakes each in the DMRC. While proposing free Metro rides for women in June, the AAP government had justified that such a move would encourage the use of public transportation as well as ensure women’s safety.

Some women said they were not in need of any preferential treatment. Many, including women activists and “Metro Man” E. Sreedharan, believe that women have been frontrunners in every field and do not mind paying for their own tickets.

Mr Sreedharan had warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi over AAP’s free ride plan, claiming that this service for women would add up to DMRC’s debt woes, which currently amounts to Rs 35,000 crore.

Delhi Metro has been one of the major friction points between AAP and BJP. The issue of hiking ticket prices has been a massive bone of contention between the two.

The Centre had on Wednesday asked the AAP government to reconsider its decision not to start work on Metro Phase-IV project. The AAP government reportedly wants the housing and urban affairs (HUA) ministry to revise its approval in tune with its own dispensation's proposal — a demand the Centre is not ready to accept.