The Madras High Court on Monday granted the Tamil Nadu government four more weeks to take a decision on revising private and government bus fares, which were fixed at 0.58 rupees per kilometre in 2018 and have not been revised since.
Justice Hemant Chandangoudar adjourned the hearing on a 2025 writ petition filed by the Federation of Bus Operators Association of Tamil Nadu to 26 October 2026, so that the government could reach a final decision after consulting all stakeholders.
The court was told that an expert committee headed by the Transport and Road Safety Commissioner had already submitted its report to a high-level committee made up of the Home Secretary, the Transport Secretary and the Finance Secretary.
Private bus operators told the court that when the fare was last set in 2018, a litre of diesel sold for 67.50 rupees. It now costs around 100 rupees a litre.
The court also heard how the fare compares with the rest of southern India. Kerala fixed its rate at 1.10 rupees per kilometre in 2022, Andhra Pradesh at 1.02 rupees in 2022, Karnataka at 1 rupee in 2020 and Telangana at 0.83 rupees in 2019. Tamil Nadu has the lowest stage carriage fare among the southern states.
The procedural history is a matter of record. The high-level committee was constituted in December 2024. Consultations with state transport undertakings, private operators, commuters and other stakeholders were held during 2025. The expert committee submitted its report on 19 February 2026.
Since then the government has been periodically seeking extensions of time from the court in order to study that report in detail.
The adjournment to 26 October is the latest of those extensions. It is granted, as the earlier ones were, so that a decision may be taken.
It is worth being exact about what is being measured here. The fare is a rate: rupees per kilometre. The deliberation is also a rate: weeks per decision. Only one of them has been revised since 2018.
This newspaper wishes to record that the process is working. A fare is a price, and a price is a number the state is obliged to keep under review. Tamil Nadu has kept it under review continuously for eight years without at any point disturbing it.
The result speaks for itself. Every other southern state took a decision and now has a higher fare. Tamil Nadu took none and has the lowest in the region. On the evidence before the court, deliberation is the most effective price-control instrument available to a modern administration, and it requires no legislation.
The committee structure confirms the finding. It took fourteen months from the constitution of the high-level committee in December 2024 to the expert report in February 2026, and a further seven months to study the report, with four weeks still to run. At no stage has anyone been asked to study the fare.
The Department of Unnecessary Research observes that the only quantity in this matter that has been revised, repeatedly and without objection from any party, is the date. It has therefore submitted a proposal to the high-level committee recommending that bus fares in Tamil Nadu be denominated in weeks, which would bring the tariff into line with the only unit the state has demonstrated it can adjust.