This happened to us two weeks back in India. As a part of our vacation in India, we decided to go to Goa with our extended family members. We left Alway Kerala on 25Th. July in a tour bus we were 23 people. Since it was a long journey we hired a air conditioned coach.
As we crossed the boarder of Karnataka state from Kerala, our bus was stopped at a boarder check post. The officer at the check post asked us to take a permit to travel through Karnataka State. We enquired about the fee for this permit. The answer was, since we are traveling in a luxury coach the fee would be Rs.660.00 per seat in that bus not based on how many people traveling. This bus had 36 seats and 23 passengers. We had to pay Rs.23,100.00 in order to proceed with our journey. Does this make any sense, people traveling by luxury cars are not taxed like this? Train passengers are not taxed like this.
Since we were almost half way to Goa we had very little choice but pay this horrible fee. These are my questions. Karnataka and Kerala are two neighbouring states in the Union of India then why travellers are penalized like this? Our further enquiry in to this matter reveled that only people heavily taxed those people travel as a group in tour vehicles. If our bus did not have air condition and push back seats then the fee would have been Rs. 330 per seat.
Before we crossed the boarder from Karnataka to Goa, we were stopped two more times by high way police to make sure we paid this fee. I can't understand the logic behind taxing tourists like this. I will never consider Karnataka as a place to travel through when I am in India next time.
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