New Delhi :
The government on Friday announced extending the date to December 15 for making FASTag mandatory for toll payments on national highways.The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had earlier announced that from December 1, toll payments on highways would be accepted through FASTags only.
"To facilitate sufficient lead time to citizens to obtain FASTag, it has now been decided that all the lanes in the Fee plazas shall be declared as 'FASTag lane of Fee Plaza' by December 15, 2019," a Ministry of Road Transport and Highways communication said.
The National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) programme,the flagship initiative of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, has been implemented on a pan-India basis in order to remove bottlenecks and ensureseamless movement of traffic and collection of user fee as per the notifiedrates, using passive radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.Over 70lakh FASTags had been issued till Wednesday, with the highest per-day issuanceof 1,35,583 tags on November 26, 2019, whereas 1.03 lakh tags were issued onthe day before.
The average daily issuance had grown by 330 per cent from8,000 in July to 35,000 tags sold in November 2019 after the Governmentannounced to implement it from December 1.
After announcement of waiver of tag cost from November 21,there has been a growth in FASTag issuance.To give a fillip to digital paymentsand bring in enhanced transparency, the ministry had directed to declare alllanes of fee plazas on national highways as 'FASTag lanes' by December 1.
However, one lane in each direction was decided to be keptas 'hybrid lane' which will accept FASTag and other modes of payment..
"With the above mandate, average daily transactionsprocessed through FASTag have grown from 8.8 lakh in July this year to 11.2lakh transactions in November 2019, while the average daily collection hasgrown from Rs 11.2 crore to Rs 19.5 crore for the given period," theministry has said earlier this week.
All the available mode of recharges such as debit card,credit card, net banking and Unified Payments Interface have been enabled forloading money to the FASTag account.
A customer may call on the helpline number, '1033', for anyassistance related to FASTags, the ministry said and added that they can alsoreach out to the banks to obtain FASTags.