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% across all sectors of DSS-operated ferry services — mainland-island ships, inter-island vessels, foreshore and harbour ferries, every class of accommodation, every type of vessel — it issued exactly such an order. One directive. One rate. Every sector named. Every commuter covered.

What the Islands Got Instead Was An Umbrella That Covers Only Half 

For eleven consecutive years, the same order has been applied with near-perfect fidelity in the mainland-island ship sector. Whereas in the harbour and foreshore sectors it has been exceeded, in some categories by more than double the approved ceiling. 

What makes this not merely a policy failure but an accountability failure is what happened when the deviation was placed on public record. The administration was notified. Elected representatives raised it. A formal civic representation reached the Chief Secretary's office. The April 1 revision went ahead, unchanged. At some point, silence stops being an absence and becomes a statement.

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. Its operative part is unambiguous: the Director of Shipping Services was authorised to revise passenger fares across all sectors — mainland-island, inter-island, foreshore, and harbour ferry — by 5% annually from 2015-16 onwards. Four sectors named together. One rate. No exceptions. 

For eleven consecutive years, DSS has cited this letter in its annual fare revision orders. The order for the most recent revision — Order No. 216 dated 26th February 2026, revising fares for 2026-27 — states in its opening paragraph that fares have been revised "in accordance to the Andaman & Nicobar Administration's direction contained in Letter No. 5-1/2010-TR(PF) dated 16th February, 2015." 

The letter is cited as authority. The fares that follow in the annexures depart from the rate that authority prescribes. DSS has placed its own contradiction on official record — invoking a 5% mandate in the order but imposing higher rates in the sectors where islanders have no alternative. 

What Eleven Years Produced 

The basic harbour ferry passenger fare stood at ₹8 in 2016-17. At 5% CAGR over 10 years, it should be ₹13 today. Instead it is ₹16 — an excess of ₹3, about 23% above policy, charged per trip. The two-wheeler vehicle ferry fare tells a starker version of the same pattern: from a 2016-17 base of ₹20, policy-compliant growth would place it at ₹33 today; DSS has instead taken it to ₹65 — an excess of ₹32 per trip. That gap translates into an effective annual increase of approximately 12.5% — more than double the approved rate — compounding across successive revision cycles without authorisation. The Port Blair–Kadamtala passenger fare has gone from ₹45 to ₹135 — a 200% increase over the decade, against a policy-compliant figure of approximately ₹73. 

There is a further detail within the current fare schedule that sharpens the picture. Monthly passes for regular harbour ferry passengers are broadly consistent with 5% annual revision. It is the per-trip fares that carry the full weight of the deviation. The excess burden therefore falls not on the regular daily commuter who holds a monthly pass, but on the irregular user — the patient travelling to hospital, the small trader making an occasional trip, the family crossing for an emergency. These are precisely the users least able to absorb an unexplained and unauthorised surcharge. 

The same order. The same rate. Faithfully followed where it is convenient. Consistently exceeded where captive commuters have no alternative. 

Silence Became the Response 

Earlier this year, this deviation was documented in full and placed in the public domain. What followed illuminates the nature of the problem as clearly as the data does. 

On 30th March 2026, Movement: Paani Paar Ki Awaaz — a non-political formation of Pradhans and social workers from rural South Andaman, the communities that live across the water from Sri Vijaya Puram (erstwhile Port Blair) and depend entirely on these ferries — picked up the issue and submitted a formal representation to the Chief Secretary, A&N Administration. The name of the movement carries the geography of the issue within it: Paani Paar, across the water, is where these residents live, connected to the city by nothing except the ferry services whose fares the letter sought to address. 

The representation cited the policy deviation, detailed the burden on daily commuters, and made six specific demands: rollback of excess fares, an independent tariff regulator, transparent revision linked to service benchmarks, fleet augmentation, public consultation before future revisions, and consideration of subsidy models to protect island commuters. A copy went to the Director of DSS. Elected PRI representatives had separately met the Secretary Shipping to raise the same concerns. 

The administration had public notice through the press and formal civic notice through the Chief Secretary's office. Yet the revision went ahead on April 1, unchanged. No acknowledgement. No response. No correction. 

The record speaks for itself. 

The Structural Failure 

The fare deviation is only the symptom. The deeper problem is the absence of an independent oversight mechanism for tariff revision in the DSS-operated ferry network. Without transparent cost audits, defined service benchmarks, or mandatory public consultation, revision has become an annual internal exercise conducted without accountability — and, as eleven years of evidence shows, without adherence to the policy that governs it. 

The consequences compound in other ways too. Over the past decade and a half, the DSS fleet serving harbour and foreshore routes has seen no significant augmentation despite growing demand. The Bambooflat–Chatham route continues to suffer from single-ramp jetty constraints that cause routine congestion — a problem documented and acknowledged years ago but unresolved to this day. In most regulated transport systems, fare increases are preceded by capacity augmentation and service improvement. 

In the harbour and foreshore sectors of the A&N Islands, fares have risen beyond the approved rate while the infrastructure constraints that have long plagued these routes remain entirely unaddressed. The burden of operational inefficiency has been transferred, year after year, to the commuter — without a public accounting of what the policy actually permits. 

Restoring Policy Compliance 

The remedy in this case is remarkably simple: the administration only needs to follow the policy it already cites. It requires no new legislation, no fresh policy mandate, no administrative restructuring. The answer lies in the same letter that has been cited every April for eleven years. It requires only that DSS apply the rate written in that letter to the harbour and foreshore sectors, as it has faithfully applied to the mainland-island sector. That is not a reform. It is compliance — the most basic obligation an administrative order can demand of those who invoke it. 

Beyond that immediate correction, what the A&N Islands need is: an independent tariff regulator, transparent cost audits, defined service benchmarks, and mandatory public consultation before revision. The islander who crosses the Bambooflat bay to reach a hospital, a school, or a market is not asking for subsidy. They are asking for the protection the umbrella order promised — a uniform rate, held equally over every sector it names. That the ask must be made at all, eleven years after the order was written, is itself the measure of how far implementation has drifted from intent. 

Ferry services in these islands are not a commercial proposition to be optimised. They are the connective links of island life — between shores, between communities, between people and the services they depend on. In island territories worldwide, such services are governed by principles of affordability and public welfare, not cost recovery alone. The A&N Islands deserve no less. The islanders who have waited eleven years deserve, at the very least, to have the umbrella held the right way — as proof that someone in authority has finally heard them.