In what can be described as one of the worst advertisements for the Congress government in Karnataka, the steep fare hike for Bengaluru Metro rides has cost the Siddaramaiah government hugely in terms of its image and popularity among the Bangaloreans who are deploring the metro fare hike.

So much so that this evening, members of the Bangalore Metro Commuters Association held a protest at Freedom Park, demanding a full roll back of the hike. One of the members of the association said yesterday its members were stopped when they were collecting signatures for a petition against the fare hike outside Metro stations. Over 6000 commuters had signed the petition already.

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But these protests are further damaging the image of the state government, which is trying its best to distance itself from the fare hike but is finding itself under the firing line for something it claims was not its doing in the first place.

The Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has requested the Metro Corporation to bring down the fare hike that has been very steep, but it seems to be in a mood to oblige. It has flatly refused to “bring down or roll back” the hikes that have been carried out after a period of five years.

For the opposition BJP, the fare hike and the resultant criticism and public outrage against the state government has come as a god sent opportunity and the saffron party is milking it dry. What this demonstrable metro fare hike has done is to highlight the fare, price and rate hikes of many essential services in Karnataka and use it to spin the narrative that Congress was completely ruining the economy through freebies and the rise in prices of essentials was only due to the unabashed welfare politics it played on the eve of the assembly elections.

For the BJP, the optics cannot be better. A master narrative craftsperson that the BJP has become over the years, the Karnataka BJP lost no time in blasting the Congress government as an anti-people and a reckless entity that threw all cautions and economics to the winds to land the state in a situation that the common people find cheated and squeezed.

The narrative is sticking and the government is on the backfoot, presenting a defence that the people find it difficult to believe even if it is the factual truth.

Yes, the fare hike in Bengaluru Metro is very steep, in some cases nearly double of the previous fare. And quite naturally, the BJP Karnataka unit has taken the government to the cleaners on the issue and added this aspect to give more power to its spin on its narrative that the state government was fleecing people in every which way so as to finance its “vote-seeking freebies”.

Taking the BJP criticism head on, state Transport Minister K Ramalinga Reddy said the state government had absolutely no role in the fare hike in metros, effected two days ago and it was the Central Government- run metro corporation that decided and implemented the fare hike. The BJP, Reddy said, was always first in taking credit for anything but when it is time to accept blame they shift it onto the other.

In fact, it was Siddaramaiah who began this line, when he said that the Bengaluru Metro was a joint operation of Centre, State government and the Metro corporation and that its CEO was also the Union Secretary of Urban Development and that the decision to hike the fares was taken by the officials, over whom the Central Government has control.

Siddaramaiah launched into a diatribe against the BJP leaders who were always first to take credit for the metro project and blame the Congress when there is a public outrage against fare hike. The BJP leaders are also peddling lies and half-truths to twist the facts on the crucial fare hike, which took place after five years.

The CM said the ticket fare had not been revised since 2017, hence Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) had written to the Central Government to revise the fare. “If the price hike was under the State Government’s control, they would have written to us and not the Centre,’’ the CM said.

“BJP leaders are trying to spread fake news on the metro fare hike and misleading the public,” he said and added, the BMRCL was established by the State and Central governments with officials from both governments on its board. But, he said, “It is an independent institution. The State Government does not have complete control. Like any other Metro corporation in India, BMRCL too functions under the Metro Railways (Operation and Maintenance) Act of 2002.”

After the corporation wrote to the Centre, seeking permission to hike fares, a price revision committee had been constituted under the chairmanship of retired Justice R Tharaani of the Madras High Court in September 2024. The committee had interacted with BMRCL, and officials of the Delhi and Chennai Metro corporations, and submitted its report in December 2024.

When BMRCL first fixed fares, in 2017, it only had 42.30 km of metro in the first phase. By 2026, the city is expected to have 175.55 km of metro network. The price revision committee went into all aspects and approved the new fares, the CM said.

Siddaramaiah also highlighted the fact that “Except Delhi, in the first phase, all Metro fares were decided by the State government and now it is done by the Centre.”