Highway agencies should not charge toll if roads are not in good condition: Gadkari

NEW DELHI: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has said that highway agencies should not charge tolls if roads are not in good condition.

Gadkari was speaking at a global workshop on satellite-based tolling, set to be implemented over 5,000 km this financial year.

“If you don’t provide good quality service, you should not charge toll…We are in a hurry to start tolling to collect user fees and protect our interest,” the road transport and highways minister said. “You should collect the user fee where you provide the best quality road. If you collect toll on roads with potholes, mud, then there will be a backlash from people,” he added.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) plans to roll out a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system, initially for commercial vehicles and eventually for private ones. This new system will work alongside the current RFID-based ETC within the existing FASTag ecosystem. NHAI has also suggested measures like driver behavior analysis and fraud detection, which could enable faster credit from banks based on travel plans.