Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday demanded that highway authorities should not impose tolls on poor-quality roads. “If you are not providing quality service, you should not impose tolls,” the BJP leader said at a global workshop on satellite-based tolling systems to be introduced on 5,000 km this fiscal.
“We are in a hurry to introduce tolls to collect fees and protect our interests. One should impose user fees where one offers the best quality of roads. If you impose tolls on roads with potholes and mud, people will retaliate,” the Minister of Road and Transport was quoted by PTI.
The state-run NHAI intends to introduce a GNSS-based electronic tolling system under the current FASTag system, initially adopting a hybrid approach using both RFID-based and GNSS-based tolling systems.
The NHAI plans to implement this system first for commercial vehicles and then for private vehicles, keeping in mind concerns about scalability and privacy. The highways authority has also proposed to include driver behaviour analysis and backend data analytics to detect fraud.
“With GNSS, payment modes could be changed from prepaid to postpaid. Banks and financial institutions could provide faster loans based on travel plans,” NHAI said.
On Tuesday, Gadkari said that under the Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), highway construction could be made flexible and market-driven to ensure completion. “I believe that infrastructure should be developed by the contractors.”
Under the Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), the state bears around 40 per cent of the project cost while the contractor bears the rest. “Why should the government always bear 40 per cent of the cost even if the contractor is willing to invest more than 60 per cent of the project? What we need is a deal and the proposals should be market-driven,” he asked.
Gadkari added that the introduction of electronic toll collection based on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is expected to increase India’s total toll revenue by at least Rs 10,000 crore. In the year 2023-24, the total toll collection in India reached Rs 64,809.86 crore, marking a 35 per cent increase over the previous year and exceeding the government and industry estimates due to the sharp rise in commercial traffic.
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