The Delhi government should pay Rs 3,000 crore annually for five years if it wants to block the next increase in fares of the city’s metro train service, the Centre said on Sunday. Otherwise, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation will be “starved of finances”, leading to “deterioration of the quality of services which it stands for”, Hindustan Times quoted the Centre as saying.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had called the proposed increase in fares “anti-people” and had pledged he would not let it happen. The metro service runs under an equal equity partnership between the Delhi government and the Centre.

If Delhi agrees to pay, another fare fixation committee will be set up and the financial viability of the Delhi Metro will have to be reconsidered, said Union Urban Development Minister Hardeep Singh Puri in a letter to Kejriwal, responding to his earlier letter urging for the fare hike to be stopped.

On October 1, Puri had said the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation could suffer a financial crunch similar to the Delhi Transport Corporation’s if the fare revision is delayed.

Fares on the Capital’s metro transit system are due to be revised a second time this year from October 10. They were last revised in May. Before May, the last revision to the fare structure was made in 2009.

The central government does not have authority to stop the fare revision as it is based on recommendations of the Fare Fixation Committee, Puri said further in his letter.

Kejriwal calls fare hike a ‘violation of law’

Union Minister Puri’s letter comes after Kejriwal had asked Transport Minister Kailash Gehlot to find a way to block the fare revision.

The Chief Minister’s Office had on Monday reiterated its stance that increasing the fare would be a violation of law. Kejriwal has earlier cited a Fare Fixation Committee’s earlier recommendation that said there should be at least a year’s gap before increasing the fares.