New Delhi. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is taking several steps to prevent people from deliberately not installing Fastag on the windscreen of the vehicle on national highways. According to an official statement released on Thursday, NHAI has issued guidelines to charge double toll from such vehicles. Vehicles that do not have Fastag installed on the inside front windshield and enter the toll lane will have to pay double toll.
NHAI said that deliberately not putting Fastag on the windscreen causes unnecessary delays at the toll plaza, causing inconvenience to other vehicles. NHAI said, “Detailed standard operating procedures (SOPs) have been issued to all user fee collection agencies and concessionaires, so that double user fee can be charged in case Fastag is not installed on the front windshield.” According to the statement, this information will also be prominently displayed at all toll plazas, in which people will be informed about the penalty imposed for entering the toll lane without installing Fastag on the windshield.
The statement said that CCTV footage along with the vehicle registration number (VRN) will be recorded at the toll plaza in non-FASTag cases. This will help in maintaining proper records about the fee collected and the presence of the vehicle in the toll lane.
The statement said that any Fastag which is not installed on the designated vehicle as per the standard procedure is not entitled to make electronic toll collection (ETC) transactions at the fee plaza and will have to pay double the toll fee and can also be blacklisted. The NSAI said that the issuing banks have also been instructed to ensure that the Fastag is installed on the front windshield of the designated vehicle while issuing Fastag from various points of sale (POS).