Single bench to hear all metro pleas

Mumbai: The Bombay high court (HC) on Tuesday informed the petitioners who are challenging increase in fare of metro train that all the matters pertaining to any metro project would be tagged together and would be heard by a single bench.

The HC would now decide about further course of action on hearing petitions related to metro project on Thursday.

The HC was supposed to hear a bunch of petitions challenging fare hike of Mumbai Metro. When the matter came up for hearing before the division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice M.S. Sonak the judges informed the petitioners that all the petitions related to metro projects would be put up for hearing before a single bench.

The contention of the petitioners is that the Indian Tramways Act would apply here and not Metro Act. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam have filed the petitions opposing the decision of hike in fare of metro.

The Mumbai Metro One Private Limited (MMOPL), a subsidiary of Reliance Energy, which runs the metro has claimed that it is incurring a loss of lakhs of rupees on daily basis and hence they need to increase fare to recover at least operating cost of Metro.

Earlier, the metro was not allowed to increase the fare in absence of a Fare Fixation Committee (FFC) however, later the centre appointed FFC had granted permission to increase the fare. The MMRDA had than challenged the FFC decision to allow metro to increase the fare.