Karnataka bus fares are set to rise from November 5, Transport Minister Bairathi Suresh said, although the government will decide the exact increase after a meeting with transport department and corporation officials on November 4.
Suresh made the announcement while speaking to reporters in Chikkaballapur on Sunday. He said the fare revision had become necessary because diesel price increases had placed a financial burden on the state’s four transport corporations.
According to the minister, the Union government had increased diesel prices five times over the past year. The increases, he said, were contributing to an annual loss of ₹2,000 crore across Karnataka’s four transport corporations. The corporations were already carrying cumulative losses of ₹9,000 crore, he added.
The minister did not specify the percentage or amount of the proposed fare increase. He said the final figure would be decided at the November 4 meeting involving officials from the Transport Department and the state’s transport corporations.
Suresh said the issue had already been discussed at a recent meeting of the state Cabinet. The responsibility for taking the fare revision decision had been assigned to Chief Minister D K Shivakumar and the Transport Department, he said.
The proposed change will affect passengers using Karnataka’s state-run bus services, including daily commuters and people travelling between towns and cities. The exact effect on passengers will depend on the fare structure approved after the officials’ meeting. No revised fare table was provided in the report.
Karnataka’s four transport corporations operate the state’s public bus services. Their financial position has become central to the government’s case for revising fares, with the minister linking the proposed increase to fuel costs and accumulated losses. The government has not announced details of any parallel measures to reduce the corporations’ expenditure or improve their revenues.
The next formal step is the meeting scheduled for November 4. The government is expected to determine the scale of the increase there, with the new fares scheduled to come into force from November 5.
