Editorial: Time to bell the toll cats

Nitin Gadkari is promising a new policy on highway tolls but, knowing the Union government’s tendency to give with one hand and take with the other, we will have to wait for the proof of the pudding to be served.

From the minister’s submission in the Lok Sabha this week, we get two indications as to what the new policy might have in store for us. One is that it will be consumer-centric, which offers hope that there will be some relent from the current extraction of costs from road users. The second pointer by Gadkari was explicit and emphatic: “It is the policy of the government that when you want a good road, you have to pay for it,” he said.

Taken together, the two pointers seem contradictory. If cost recovery is the sine qua non of Gadkari’s highway programme, what real concessions can consumers expect from the new policy then? Will they be spared the current extortion taking place at toll plazas or will they be fobbed off with a bauble here and a discount there?

Anyone who’s driven more than 60 km on Gadkari’s highways knows that toll plazas have become ubiquitous. From a mere 366 toll collection points in 2014, we now have 1,550 operating on national and state highways. Alongside its ambitious highway construction programme, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) has developed an appetite for toll collection, which in 2023-24 reached Rs 64,809 crore, a 35 per cent increase compared to the previous year. The Indiawide spread of FASTag payments since 2019 has turned this appetite into ravenous hunger that gobbled up Rs 580 crore in December 2024 alone.

MORTH has now become an insatiable beast that allows its concessionaires free rein to collect as much as they can as long as they feed it. As a result, a number of angularities have crept into India’s highway transportation system, adding to the cost of travel and opening up room for corruption.

As per the National Highways Fee (Determination of Rates and Collection) Rules, 2008, there ought to be a minimum of 60 km distance between two toll points, but NHAI concessionaires frequently flout this norm. There have been reports that toll collection by NHAI sub-contractors continues even after the expiration of the toll-operate-transfer (TOT) contracts. The courts are hearing petitions questioning why NHAI does not surveil well enough when concessionaires collect tolls even on semi-built portions of highways or accept cash transactions through unauthorized devices rather than the designated Toll Management System (TMS).

Hopefully, Gadkari’s promised policy will address these consumer and tax-payer concerns seriously enough and avoid the path taken by the Railway Ministry of distracting the people with some shiny photogenic things while the main business goes to pot. People understand that highways are expensive to build but it’s unconscionable to expect them to pay tolls for poorly maintained highways and long past the mandated cease-by date only to make contractors rich.

The new policy must require NHAI to use its impressive signage talents to display at every toll gate the terms and duration of its concessions. Further, motorists must be facilitated through real-time helplines to report badly maintained roads that merit a toll waiver. Most importantly, there is a need for greater transparency when NHAI perpetuates a concession beyond the TOT-mandated period citing land acquisition costs and such like. These extensions should be subjected to third-party oversight to remove any scope for sweetheart deals.