Travel by train is going to get costlier as Indian Railways has issued a circular notifying increase in train fare. From Sunday onward fares of first class and all AC class coaches with be raised up by 4.35 percent from current fare. Also 0.5 percent tax will be levied in support of  'Clean Indian Mission' or Swachh Bharat abhiyan.

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Just to give you an idea about how much increase in price one may see, consider traveling by train between two important stations, say New Delhi and Mumbai. If you travel in First AC class by mail/ express types of trains between these two cities, you'll be required to pay Rs. 206 more than what you currently pay. Similarly on Delhi Chennai route a passenger will be paying Rs. 140 more than what he pays currently. Both 'swachh bharat cess' i.e. (tax for clean india mission) and service tax is included in it.

If you think that is too much of a burden, than there is one more bad news for you. A new railway rule is coming into action as per which no refund on waiting list tickets will be granted if a ticket holder fails to apply for cancellation and refund before 31 minutes of scheduled departure time of the train. As of now one can get refunds even after 4 hrs of train departure. The change in railway rule has taken place due to changes in chart preparation time of train. As of now the train chart is prepared 2 hrs before the departure of the train. But now the chart will be ready as early as 4 hrs before the scheduled departure of the train.

Railway ministry has tweeted about revised/ changed refund rules. Have a look at their tweet below:

New rules have already come into force from Nov 12, 2015. Most railway users are unaware of them and hence there is much confusion regarding railway ticket cancellation and refund rules. If you cancel your railway ticket more than 48 hrs before departure, you'll get following listed refunds as per your travel class:

  • First AC/ AC Executive class - refund amount: (Fare - Rs. 240).
  • Second AC/ First Class - refund amount: (Fare - Rs. 200).
  • Third AC - refund amount: (Fare - Rs. 180).
  • Sleeper class - refund amount: (Fare - Rs. 120).
  • Second class - refund amount: (Fare - Rs. 60).
If you cancel you tickets between 48 hrs and 12 hrs before departure of train than 25% will be deducted as cancellation charges and rest will be refunded. If cancellation of train ticket is done between 12 to 4 hrs before train departure than 50% will be deducted. No refund are given if you fail to cancel the tickets before 4 hrs train departure.

Apart from above deduction clerical charges will be deducted too on RAC (see PNR status for details) and waiting list tickets. These charges are doubled too and also now RAC and waiting list can be cancelled up to half and hour before the train departure. If a railway customer fails to cancel RAC and waiting list tickets half and hour before the train departure no refund will be granted to him.

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