Several States on Monday joined hands to pave the way for a common electronic toll system across the country as mandated by the Road Transport and Highways Ministry beginning December 1. States signed an MoU for an integrated FASTag with e-way bill system and also a NHAI prepaid wallet system to enable commuters for a hassle free ride on tolled roads and expressways throughout the country.
Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said the integrated tolling system will provide seamless movement for road users and check revenues leakage at toll plazas. Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways Gen. (Retd.) V.K Singh and transport ministers and senior officials from several states were also in attendance.
The Ministry is encouraging States to come onboard FASTag, so that seamless movement of transport can be assured across the nation. For this, Scheme Guidelines for Inclusion of State/ City Toll Plaza under NETC programme (FASTag) was circulated to all states by Indian Highways Management Corp Ltd (IHMCL).
The Scheme offers participating State authorities/agencies shorter turnaround time by allowing them to be a part of the robust FASTag solution architecture which already supports approx. 6 million tags with approximately daily 10 lakh transactions. Another MoU was also signed between IHMCL and GST Network (GSTN) for integrating E-Way Bill system with FASTag.
"The move assumes special significance due to the fact that from 1st of December this year, toll collections on all National Highways will mandatorily be done through FASTag only.," said Gadkari inaugurating a conference on 'One Nation One Tag - FASTag' in the national Capital to roll out the process for having a unified electronic system across the country.
The Minister said that the FASTag is being positioned as the 'Aadhaar' for a vehicle and in future efforts are being carried out to enable usage of FASTag for making various vehicle related payments apart from toll payments, such as fuel payment, parking charges, etc.
Under the National Electronic Toll Collection programme of the Ministry, toll collection at national highways toll plazas is done through RFID based FASTags. However, collection at State highways toll plazas is done either manually or through other tags. This leads to inconvenience for the road users.
FASTag is acceptable across over 490 National Highways toll plazas and selected 39+ State highways toll plazas. More than 6 Million FASTag were issued till last month, with overall cumulative ETC collection of over Rs 12,850 Crore since inception. The total cumulative number of successful ETC transactions carried out is over 5540.67 lakhs as in September 2019.
IHMCL and NHAI have developed the ‘My FASTag mobile App’ to provide a single one-stop solution to FASTag customers. The App helps linking of bank neutral FASTag to bank account of customer's choice.
An NHAI Prepaid Wallet was also launched giving customers the choice of not linking their FASTag to their bank accounts.
Other features of the App include UPI recharge of bank specific FASTag - More than 80 percent of FASTag issued can be recharged with this facility, single portal for customer login page for issuer banks, Search for nearby Point-of-Sale location by various banks and IHMCL, List of Operational Toll Plazas under NETC programme, and Customer Support Toll-Free numbers.
