Around 5.9 crore FASTags active in country: Gadkari
There are around 5.9 crore FASTags active across the country, of the total 11.86 crore FASTags issued so far, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday. FASTag is an RFID passive tag used for making toll payments directly from the customer’s linked prepaid, savings, or current account. Presently, more than 98 per cent of user fee on National Highways is collected through electronic toll collection system, the Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.
“As of December, 2025, out of total issued 11.86 crore FASTags since inception, about 5.9 crore FASTags are active across the country and used for electronic toll transactions at National Highway Fee Plazas,” Gadkari informed the Upper House. The number of average daily ETC transactions on NH fee plaza is around 105 lakh in 2025-26 (till December, 2025). The constant growth and adoption of FASTag by highway users is encouraging and has helped in increased efficiency in toll operations, he said.
On annual pass facility, he said since the launch of the initiative on August 15, 2025, around 42 lakh annual passes have been activated, facilitating over 19 crore transactions as on December 31, 2025. Currently, around 25 per cent non-commercial vehicles are doing FASTag transactions using the annual pass.
An impact assessment conducted for the National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) Programme during 2024-25 indicates that the average time taken by a vehicle to cross a fee plaza under ETC operations is 40 seconds, as compared to 12.23 minutes per vehicle under the earlier manual tolling system, Gadkari said.
This demonstrates a significant improvement in traffic flow and a substantial reduction in congestion at fee plaza, the ministry said. In a separate reply, he said the total amount of user fee collected at fee plazas on National Highways during last three years (2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25) is Rs 1,65,322.67 crore.
