A Curious Case of Selective Compliance and Deviation from the Approved Policy on Fare Revision
A Curious
Case of Selective Compliance and Deviation from the Approved Policy on Fare
Revision
One order, one
rate, and eleven years of fare hikes that don't add up. By the policy's own
arithmetic, the two-wheeler ferry fare that should have been ₹33 today stands
fixed at ₹65 — 97% above what the approval permits. That deviation is not a
rounding error. Not an inflation adjustment. It is the story. So is the silence
that followed every attempt to have that story heard.
By
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. When the Andaman & Nicobar Administration issued Letter No. 5-1/2010-TR(PF) in February 2015, authorising a uniform annual upward fare revision of 5% across all sectors and classes of DSS-operated vessels, it issued exactly what fits into that definition of an umbrella order. One directive. One rate. Every sector named. Every commuter fully covered.
What the islanders got instead was an umbrella that covers only half.
For eleven years, the same order has been followed
almost exactly in the mainland-island shipping sector. But in the inter-island, harbour and
foreshore sectors, the approved rate has been repeatedly exceeded, in some
categories by more than double.
The Citation That Condemns Itself
The governing document in this matter is Letter No. 5-1/2010-TR(PF), issued by the A&N Administration Secretariat on 16th February 2015. It authorised the Director of Shipping Services to revise passenger fares including vehicle ferry fares annually by 5% across all DSS-operated vessels in the mainland-island, inter-island, foreshore, and harbour ferry sectors from 2015-16 onwards.
For the past eleven years, the Directorate of Shipping Services (DSS) has cited this approval for subsequent fare revision.
The latest revision order for 2026-27, again states
that fares were revised in accordance with the Administration's 2015 direction.
The revisions follow the approved regime in the mainland-island shipping sectors, whereas it curiously deviates in the inter-island, harbour and foreshore sectors. In doing so
the DSS has placed its own contradiction on record - invoking a 5%
mandate but imposing higher rates in the sectors where DSS enjoys a monopoly, and islanders
have no alternative.
Incidentally, in the Bambooflat–Chatham route and for
that matter in almost all other inter-island, foreshore and harbour ferry sector, DSS is the only ferry operator.
There's no second service to turn to, no competing service to compare against.
In a market like that, the approved rate cap isn't a formality. It's the only protection
commuters have against arbitrary escalation.
What Eleven Years Produced
In 2016-17, the basic harbour ferry passenger fare stood at ₹8. At 5% CAGR over 10 years, it should be ₹13 today. Instead it stands at ₹16 — an excess of ₹3, about 23% above policy, charged per trip.
A similar divergence appears in the two-wheeler vehicle ferry fare. A commuter who paid ₹20 in 2016-17, under the approved formula, would be paying roughly ₹33 today. Instead, the fare has reached ₹65 — an excess of ₹32 per trip. That deviation is an effective annual increase of approximately 12.5% — more than double the approved rate.
On the Port Blair (now Sri Vijaya Puram) – Kadamtala route, the passenger fare has risen from ₹45 to ₹135, a 200% increase over the decade. Under the policy-compliant formula, it should have been around ₹73.
It is the per-trip fares that carry the full weight of the deviation. The excess burden falls on commuters travelling to the hospital, daily wagers crossing for work, small traders, and families moving between shores attending to routine necessities.
Read the full analysis detailing the policy deviation in my earlier article [A Decade of Rising Ferry Fares, Declining Services: Andaman & Nicobar’s Not-So-Funny April 1 Ritual, carried in Echo of India dated 1st April, 2026].
Silence Became the Response
Earlier this year, this deviation was documented in full and placed in the public domain. What followed thereafter illuminates the nature of the problem as clearly as the data does.
The Structural Failure
The fare deviation is only a symptom of a larger structural failure. The DSS-operated ferry network has no independent tariff regulator, transparent cost audits, defined service benchmarks, or mandatory public consultation. Over time, fare revision has become an internal administrative routine.
It would be unfair not to acknowledge that expenditure on fuel, operation, and maintenance costs has gone up. But that is precisely what the 2015 approval letter was meant to provide. A predictable and uniform mechanism for annual revision across all sectors alike.
What has happened instead is selective compliance.
The remedy, however, is neither complex nor radical. It just requires DSS to apply the approved rate in letter and spirit.
That is not a reform. It is compliance. It is the protection that the umbrella order promised.
Ferry services in these islands are not just a commercial operation. They are the connective links of island life — between shores, communities, workplaces, schools, hospitals, and markets. In island territories worldwide, such services are governed by principles of affordability and public welfare. Not by economics alone. The A&N Islands deserve no less.
The islands commuters who have spent eleven years paying
beyond the approved rate are not asking for anything extraordinary. They are
only asking that the umbrella be held the right way — over every sector it was originally meant to cover.
- 👉A decade of rising ferry fares, falling services
- 👉Inefficient Vehicle Ferry Service between Bambooflat-Chatham
- 👉 An appeal to the Honble Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways
- 👉 Breaking the Tyranny of Distance in Andaman and Nicobar Islands
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