Union Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari responded to complaints of excessive toll collection on Monday at News18 Chaupal with an interesting example.
Asked why Rs 8,000 crore is being collected as toll tax when the cost of road construction was only Rs 1,900 crore, the Union Minister said that toll taxes are not collected in a day and there are several expenses that need to be borne by the government both before toll collection and after it.
Explaining with an example, Gadkari said, “If you buy a car or a house in cash, its price would be Rs 2.5 lakhs. If you take the same on loan for 10 years, then its price becomes Rs 5.5 to 6 lakhs. Interest has to be paid every month. Many times the work is done by taking loans.”
Speaking on the issue of excessive toll collection on the Delhi-Jaipur Highway, that is, NH-8, Gadkari said, “The road was allotted by the UPA government in 2009. 9 banks were involved in this project. There were a lot of problems in building this road. The contractors ran away. The banks filed court cases. Then new contractors came. We terminated the new contractors. The Delhi High Court gave a stay order. We made a new DPR on this road. There are encroachments on both sides of the road. We kept trying to ensure that if we have to construct a 6-lane road, the encroachments need to be removed. This time, due to rain, we faced more problems…”
Recently, in response to an RTI, it came to light that about Rs 8,000 crore has been collected from Manoharpur Toll Plaza on Delhi-Jaipur Highway in Rajasthan, while the cost of construction of this highway was about Rs 1,900 crore.
Union Minister Gadkari boasted that India is the fifth largest economy in the world and is aspiring to be the third largest economy.
The Road Transport Minister further said that in the first 100 days of the third term of Narendra Modi government, eight road projects worth Rs 51,000 crores were approved by the Cabinet. By March, the department is aiming at completing projects worth Rs 3 lakh crores.
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