Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway concessionaire asks villagers to get FASTags
The residents of 31 villages who were exempted from paying toll by the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway concessionaire Millennium City Expressway Ltd (MCEPL) in 2015 are confused regarding the issue of exemption from the use of FASTags. On December 15, FASTags were launched by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), and since then, the MCEPL has calibrated 1,000 such FASTags for local exemptees—17,000 in total. Till now, residents have been using Pass Tags, which were issued earlier by the concessionaire.
MCEPL officials said that villagers will have to get their own FASTags and they will simply calibrate them at their end. The concessionaire also made it clear that they were not selling FASTags or giving out any tag for free. Anish John, systems manager, MCEPL, said, “We are not giving out FASTags to any villager. They have to buy the FASTags on their own.” The concessionaire also made it clear that they are verifying the car documents of villagers along with their residential proofs and then calibrating their FASTags. “We are checking the car documents along with their identification and residence proofs and then ensuring their FASTags are calibrated,” S Raghuraman, CEO, MCEPL, said.
Till now, 17,000 vehicles have re-registered with the toll operator as exempted at Kherki-Daula. The concessionaire had issued Pass Tags (free monthly tags) before the FASTags became operational. “The days of Pass Tags are now over. We don’t sell them anymore and had stopped selling them in August 2018. Now, every resident of the exempted villages needs to come to the toll plaza. They have the option of buying FASTags from many bank outlets at Kherki-Daula toll plaza,” John said. There are around 10,000 residents in 31 exempted villages, who cross the toll plaza daily.
The residents of the 31 villages said that no one had told them that they had to go and buy the FASTags. The locals said that they were worried that post March 15, if their Pass Tags wouldn’t work and then they would have to stand in long queues. Laxmi Narayan, a resident of Kherki Daula village, said, “No one told us to get FASTags. We assumed that the toll concessionaire will give us free tags.” Another local resident said that hardly anyone has got a FASTag.
Shivam Singh, resident, Kasan, said, “We still have our Pass Tags; if the concessionaire disables our tags, this will lead to protests at the Kherki Daula toll plaza.” The concessionaire, however, said that it will allow free access by Pass Tags till May and after that, it would be compulsory for the 31 villages to embrace the new FASTags.