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Centre relaxes deadline for FASTag due to shortage of tags
The Centre had earlier mandated all lanes of national highways toll plazas to be declared as “FASTag lanes” by December 15, in a move aimed to reduce bottlenecks.
The Union government has relaxed its rules for the rollout of the mandatory FASTag mechanism of paying at national highways, allowing more collection centres to accept cash payments instead of the previous directive that limited it to 1 – amid fears of traffic chaos once the new rule came into force from December 15.
In order to incentivise cashless payments and reduce wait times at toll booths, the Union road transport and highways ministry (MoRTH) had ordered that all but one booth at National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) facilities must soon be converted to accept only FASTag, a contactless payment device typically pasted on the windscreen of a vehicle.
The NHAI, in a letter sent on December 12, cited a lack of availability of FASTag for new users to seek a 45-day extension to the December 15 deadline, which itself had been pushed from December 1 after authorities noticed a huge rush for new tags – suggesting many had still not bought one.
In the letter, seen by HT, the NHAI sought permission to throw open more “hybrid” lanes – lanes that accept FASTag as well as cash – for 45 more days, and for a moratorium on the double-fee penalty for those paying with cash in lanes set aside only for contactless payment.
The government, in a reply on Saturday, said the NHAI was allowed to convert not more than 25% of booths in a toll plaza into “hybrid lanes” and denied the request to suspend the penalty, said an official, asking not to be named.
“The relaxation is after a shortage of tags was observed. But it will be on a case-to-case basis,” this person added.
In the letter, the ministry also put more caveats: “A daily evaluation of such cases be made to take necessary corrective action and a summary report on daily basis be sent to the ministry. It should be ensured that the least possible number of the declared “FASTag lane of Fee Plaza” be converted into the hybrid lanes temporarily… it is clarified that it is a temporary measure to be adopted for 30 days only to facilitate smooth flow of traffic so that no inconvenience is caused to the citizens”.
At present, there are 537 toll plazas operated by NHAI where the FASTag rule will come into force.
A spot-check by HT at several toll plazas in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab suggested the complete rollout will lead to significant teething troubles. An operator at the L&T Panipat toll booth said, “Right now only about 30-40% cars have FASTags on them. We have the necessary infrastructure to handle it but the issue is the tags need to be available for everyone.”
NHAI, in its letter, had said that the chips used in the tags are imported and have a wait time of 6 weeks, thereby limiting average total production capacity in the 30-50,000 daily range.
“The banks and other selling platforms supplying FASTags are contingent upon the production capacity and at present approximately 18 lakh [1.8 million] tags inventory is available in the market. With lead time due to import of the chips and subsequent production of the tags, there is a supply-deficit in the market and all citizens have not been able to obtain FASTags,” the NHAI wrote.
The highway operators said the ministry’s decision last month to waive off the cost of FASTag had resulted in exponential demand.
