NEW DELHI: Drivers who don’t fix their FASTags on the windshield of their vehicles will face permanent blacklisting of tags, a measure taken in view of the malpractice of people handing out “loose or unfixed tags” for payment of highway-user fee, which leads to congestion at toll plaza lanes and sometimes altercations with toll collectors.The NHAI company dealing with toll collection and management of highways, IHMCL, has asked federations of toll collectors, highway builders and operators to report such cases for quick action.“Tags-in-hand” have been categorised as “loose tags”. Despite repeated advisories against the practice there have been several cases of people handing out FASTag at toll gates for deduction of user fee. In letters addressed to these federations, IHMCL said, “This leads to lane-level congestion due to manual handling and violation issues, misuse in closed-loop tolling operations, generation of false chargeback demands and overall disruption of the electronic toll collection system.”The crackdown on such tags gains importance considering NHAI’s move to go for multi-lane free flow (MLFF) tolling and annual toll pass where authenticity and system reliability are key for their successful implementation.IHMCL has also instructed toll operators to give details of misuse of “exempted FASTags”. Such tags have been issued only to those persons who are exempted from paying toll. In this case, tags carry out a zero digital transaction while passing toll gates as there is no deduction of fee.
