Ministry of Railways announces relief for NFR commercial and advertisement contracts`

The Ministry of Railways has announced relief for all non-fare revenue (NFR) commercial and advertisement contracts affected by the impact of Covid19 pandemic.

Indian Railways has granted a 90-day complete relief in license fee to the existing operational contracts, by treating the period starting from March 25, 2020 to June 22, 2020 (the lockdown period) as ‘dies-non’. In government terms, dies-non means a day which cannot be treated as duty for any purpose.

 For the post-lockdown or after ‘dies-non’ period, the authority has asked the zone wise departments of the Indian Railways to calculate the relief in license fee. However, it has highlighted that the relief has to be under the terms and conditions of contracts which provide for addition/modification/review in existing agreement with mutual consent, with concurrence of finance.

The official document obtained by Media4Growth says the relief has to be decided by zonal railways by following due diligence taking into consideration the footfalls on station, in respect of individual contracts along with the contract duration.

While, the lockdown period relief will be extended to all non- fare revenue contracts such as RDN projects, OOH, mobile assets, the relief for post-lockdown period will be applicable only to the contracts valid atleast until December this year.

The authority has given the relief but with a condition that the vendors will have to submit an undertaking which will not allow them to surrender the contracts in between.

Also read: Rail media owners’ federation approaches Rail Minister with charter of requests