Toll on all roads leading to Simhastha exempted

The Madhya Pradesh government has exempted toll collection on Indore-Nagda roads till May 31 in view of Simhastha fair in Ujjain, road development corporation general manager RK Jain said on Friday.

The Madhya Pradesh government has exempted toll collection on Indore-Nagda roads till May 31 in view of Simhastha fair in Ujjain, road development corporation general manager RK Jain said on Friday.

Notice of toll exemption for Simhastha put on Dewas Road toll plaza. (HT file photo)

The month-long fair will start from April 22. The government had freed vehicles from paying toll charges on Dewas-Badnawar, Ujjain-Jhalawad roads and Unhel Bypass till June 21 but the Indore and Nagda roads were left out.

The exemption on Indore and Nagda roads was implemented from Friday, Jain said.

Hindustan Times in its March 24 edition reported that collecting toll on Indore road would result in traffic jams on the toll plaza.

The agreements over build-operator-transfer Dewas, Badnawar and Jhalawad roads have a clause that toll would remain suspended for three months for Simhastha. But it was not included in the agreements of Indore and Nagda toll roads.

Different policy of toll tax collection had irked the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad –—an apex organisation of Hindu ascetics. Seers and pilgrims had demanded that they be exempted from paying toll tax on roads leading to the fair.

However, there is no clear mention whether the loss over freeing the toll would be reimbursed by the government to the contractor.

More than 40% of pilgrims travel on Indore road during the fair and collecting toll tax will create traffic snarl and long queue at toll barriers, Rajesh Sharma, a frequent visitor to Indore, had said.

Toll tax collection has been stopped on these routes from March 22 and will continue until June 21, he said.