Electronic toll collection at highways to start from October 27

New Delhi: The government will commence the electronic toll collection process across national highways from October 27.

With the inauguration of Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system by the Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari on October 27, a uniform and acceptable standard of service to the commuters would become a reality, an official statement said.

ETC has already been installed at 55 Toll Plazas and their integration with Central Clearing House (CCH) operators has almost been completed.

A pilot project for Interoperable ETC system of 10 toll plazas between Mumbai (Charoti) and Ahmedabad has already been tested and seamless ETC on this section is in operation.

The Central Government has issued orders to incorporate ETC lanes as a mandatory clause in the contracts awarded for all the highway projects in future, the statement said.

Action will be taken to include ETC system by means of supplementary agreement in those projects which have not yet been started.

For implementing ETC across the country a new company has been constituted. The company has equity participation from NHAI (25 per cent), concessionaires (50 per cent) and financial institutions (25 per cent).

The name of the new company is 'Indian Highways Management Company Limited'. Its objectives are collection of toll through ETC System and to manage the project strategically, administratively, legally, technically and commercially.

It will also provide services of central ETC system which include toll transaction clearing house operations, help desk support and setting up of call centres for incident management etc.

Necessary amendments have already been made in the Central Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 for fitment of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag on vehicles for ETC.

At present there are some problems in collecting tolls and these are by way of not having a uniform rate throughout various sections of National Highways in India, the statement added.