The Election Commission of India has directed the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways not to go ahead with the scheduled revision of toll rates on highways till the election process is completed.
The order will impact both publicly funded highways and those operated by private concessionaires. The toll rates on expressways average Rs 2.19/ km for passenger cars. It is higher for commercial vehicles, heavy trucks and machinery.
The directions of the commission came in response to the reference from the ministry seeking clarification whether toll rates can be revised for the next financial year, as the Model Code of Conduct for the general elections is in place.
The toll rates on highways are revised every year based on a formula that takes into account the inflation rate based on the wholesale price index.
For 2024-25, the rates were to be revised up by 2.59% from Monday.
The Election Commission used the provisions of the code of conduct regarding revision power tariffs to ask for keeping the revision of toll rates in abeyance.
The code of conduct on power tariffs states that “process required for revision of power tariff may be continued by state electricity regulatory commission. However, tariff award shall be made only on completion of poll in the relevant state.”
The commission has said that user fee may be seen in the context of power tariff.
The last phase of polling in the general elections is scheduled for June 1. So the highway operators will have to collect user fees on last year’s rates and incur a loss.
There are around 855 toll gates on the national highway network of which 675 are public funded fee plazas and 180 are on stretches constructed under Build Operate Transfer (BoT) model where the fee is collected by concessionaires.
Toll collection on highways touched Rs 53,289.41 crore in the April-January period of 2023-24, which is much higher than Rs 46.998 crore collected in the whole of 2022-23. With the average toll collection of Rs 5328.9 crore per month, the collections in FY 24 are expected to touch Rs 64,000 crore.
