Page 29 - 31OCT2019E

Economy

and Highways and Micro, Small and parking charges, etc. He said that the poration of India (NPCI) is functioning
Medium Enterprises Nitin Gadkari FASTag is being positioned as the ‘Aad- as the Central Clearing House and 23
commented that the Prime Minister haar’ for a vehicle. Minister of State for Public and Private sector banks are is-
Narendra Modi has been giving a lot Road Transport and Highways Gen. suing FASTag. A cashback of 2.5% is be-
of emphasis on large scale transport (Retd.) V.K Singh underlined the ben- ing offered for the FY 2019-20 in order
reforms. efits of ‘One Nation One Tag — FASTag’ to incentivize road users for usage of
He said the unified and nation-wide scheme. He said, seamless travelling at FASTag. FASTag is acceptable across
inter-operable RFID-based tag for toll plazas will lead to ease of travelling. over 490 National Highways toll pla-
vehicles is a major step in this direction. He complimented all stake holders for zas and selected 39+ State highways
Under this system the same FASTag introducing this revolutionary idea, toll plazas. More than 6 Million FASTag
affixed on the windscreen of a vehicle which he said, is going to prove very were issued till last month, with over-
can be used to pay toll across all toll important in the overall national high- all cumulative ETC collection of over
plazas in the country. This initiative will ways development plan. 12,850 Crore since inception. The total
remove bottlenecks and ensure seam- At present, National Payments Cor- cumulative number of successful ETC
less movement of traffic and efficient transactions carried out is over 5540.67
collection of user fee. lakhs as in September 2019.
Gadkari said, this is likely to reduce FASTag is a simple The IHMCL and NHAI have devel-
the nation’s GDP loss by bringing down to use, reloadable oped the My FASTag mobile App to pro-
loss of fuel while waiting at toll plazas. vide a single one-stop solution to FAST-
This measure is both time saving, as tag which enables ag customers. The App helps linking of
also controls pollution substantially. automatic deduction bank neutral FASTag to bank account
The Minister announced that very soon, of customer’s choice. An NHAI Prepaid
nobody will be required to wait at toll of toll charges and Wallet was also launched today, giv-
plazas anywhere in the country. lets vehicles pass ing customers the choice of not linking
The Minister further said that ef- their FASTag to their bank accounts.
forts are being carried out to enable through the toll plaza Other features of the App include UPI
usage of FASTag for making various recharge of bank specific FASTag –
vehicle related payments apart from without stopping for More than 80% of FASTag issued can be
toll payments, such as fuel payment, the cash transaction recharged with this facility, single por-
tal for customer login page for issuer
banks, Search for nearby Point-of-Sale
location by various banks and IHMCL,
List of Operational Toll Plazas under
NETC programme, and Customer Sup-
port Toll-Free numbers.
There are more than one crore
trucks and buses registered in India
and toll plazas only end up slowing
down traffic, despite better roads. There
are allegations that there is huge under
reporting of vehicles that pay toll, with
the result that concessionaire’s are get-
ting a longer tenure to collect tolls and
recover costs.
The facts speak volumes for that
because there is a year on year growth
of 10% in the number of vehicles regis-
tered in India but the number of vehi-
cles paying toll on highways has actual-
ly reduced on some toll roads. The One
Nation One Tag — FASTag would also
bring in transparency while reducing
waiting time at toll plazas.

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Tehelka / 31 october 2019 29 www.Tehelka.com