NHAI (National Highways Authority of India) is planning to make payments to the Toll operators for the losses incurred during the suspension of Toll charges on National Highways.
The Toll collections were temporarily suspended from March 25 in view of the coronavirus outbreak.
Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said that the NHAI may be directed to compensate the losses incurred. “In view of COVID-19, it has been ordered to temporarily suspend the collection of toll at all toll plazas across India,” Road Transport and Highways Gadkari had announced last month. This was done to mitigate inconvenience to emergency services as well as saving critical time.
Last December, the NHAI had rolled out the electronic toll collection programme across India on its over 500 toll plazas while doubling toll charges from the vehicles entering FASTag lanes without the tag.
In order to give prime importance to existing FASTag users, dissuade defaulters and further encourage adoption of FASTags by national highway commuters, vehicles without FASTags entering the FASTag lane were being charged double the toll fee, and last month over Rs 20 crore were collected from 20 lakh vehicles encroaching FASTag lanes across India. About two crore FASTags have been issued through multiple Point of Sale (PoS) locations. FASTag transaction by the NHAI last month had crossed four million per day.
In order to further increase digital collection of user fee via FASTag at national highways fee plazas, NHAI had also waived off the FASTag cost of Rs 100 for NHAI FASTag.
ICRA had earlier forecasted that due to the coronavirus outbreak the toll collection on national highways will see a dip of about 3 per cent in the current fiscal FY20.