DSS’s Selective Compliance and the Curious Case of Deviation From Approved Fare Policy
DSS’s Selective Compliance and the Curious Case of Deviation from Approved Fare Revision For eleven consecutive years, a single administrative order has been cited to justify ferry fare revision in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. An order that prescribes a uniform 5% increase across all sectors. In that time, a two-wheeler ferry fare that should stand at ₹33 today, by the policy's own arithmetic, instead stands at ₹65 — 97% above what the order permits. That gap is not a rounding error or an inflation adjustment. It is the story. So is the silence that followed every attempt to have that story heard. By Debkumar Bhadra In administrative and legal parlance, an umbrella order is one that covers a broad area uniformly — bringing multiple sectors, categories, and classes within the ambit of a single directive. It does not choose who stands beneath it. When the A&N Administration issued Letter No. 5-1/2010-TR(PF) in February 2015, authorising a uniform annual fare revision of 5...