Toll Tax: Union Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari spoke openly on the issue of higher toll tax collection. During a program, he clarified that the government has to bear many expenses. In fact, recently an RTI came into discussion, in which it was revealed that about Rs 8 thousand crores have been collected at a toll plaza on the Delhi-Jaipur highway in Rajasthan. Whereas, the cost of building the highway was Rs 1900 crores.
In a program of News18, when Gadkari was asked that when the road was constructed for Rs 1900 crore, then why Rs 8000 crore was collected as toll tax. To this he said that tax is not collected in one day. He told that the government has to bear many expenses before and after toll collection. For this he also gave the example of buying a house on loan.
According to the report, he said, ‘If you buy a car or a house in cash, it will cost Rs 2.5 lakh. If you take these things on a loan for 10 years, then its cost will increase from Rs 5.5 lakh to Rs 6 lakh. Interest has to be paid every month. Many times work is done by taking a loan.’
Regarding charging higher toll on National Highway-8 (Delhi-Jaipur Highway), Gadkari said, ‘The UPA government had allotted the road in 2009. 9 banks were involved in this project. There have been many problems in building this road. The contractors also ran away. The banks had filed court cases. After this, new contractors came. We terminated the new contractors. The Delhi High Court issued a stay order. We prepared a new DPR on this road.’
He further said, ‘There was encroachment on both sides of the road. We were constantly trying to ensure that if we have to build a 6-lane road, the encroachment has to be removed. Then it rained and we faced many problems…’
He informed that in the first 100 days of the Narendra Modi government, the cabinet has approved 8 road projects. The department has set a target of completing projects worth Rs 3 lakh crore by March.