FASTag cards mandatory from yesterday (15th) at all tollgates!
Posted on: 16/Jan/2020 9:44:24 AM
The system of collecting tollgate charges from the vehicles passing them through the recently introduced FASTag system has been implemented from Wednesday (15th January).
As long lines of vehicles are kept waiting in all the National Highways while crossing the tollgates, it leads to heavy traffic congestion as well as an enormous waste of time apart from disturbing the smooth vehicle movement.
In order to avoid this as well as increase the transparency in the toll collections, the National Highway Commission has introduced a new electronic system for collecting toll charges known as FASTag.
The National Highways Commission has been taking various initiatives to implement the FASTag system properly.
As a step to encourage the procurement of FASTag cards, there was the free offer to collect FASTag cards at the tollgates until 15th December as announced by the central Minister Gadkari.
This had a positive effect on a large number of vehicle owners/drivers making a rush to the tollgate centres where this facility was available.
In this situation, after 15th December, it was decided to levy double the charge for the vehicles passing without FASTag cards. However, as there was a shortfall meeting the demand for FASTag cards and also in order to give the public a reasonable extension of time, it was announced that FASTag will be mandatory from 15th January.
Accordingly, FASTag is being implemented from Wednesday (15th January).
The officials of the National Highway Commission shared regarding this:
‘In major cities like Delhi, FASTag is fully in service. Various activities were undertaken to implement in the state of Tamil Nadu as well. Right from 15th December, FasTag was in service in all the lanes except one at the tollgates where cash transaction was done.
As such, most of them have started using FASTag cards. So, there are no major difficulties expected by implementing FASTag from 15th January.’
The vehicle-owners have complained that there are signal problems in many of the tollgates and this problem must be solved at the earliest.
Meanwhile, The central ministry of Highways has informed that 1 Lakh FASTag cards are being sold every day and electronic transaction over Rs. 52 Crores has already been in progress at the tollgates.
