By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: To ensure seamless travel at toll plazas and a big push to digital economy, the Centre has issued a draft notification making it mandatory that vehicles manufactured after July 1, 2017, shall be fitted with FASTag to ensure electronic tolling at all national highways across the country.

The Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways has come out with a draft notification on May 3, 2017 seeking suggestions to amend the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989. The draft rules shall be taken into consideration after expiry of a period of 15 days.

“Categories M and N motor vehicles manufactured on and after the July 1, 2017, shall be fitted with FASTag,” said the rules.

Category M vehicles include motor vehicles with at least four wheels designed and constructed for the carriage of passengers while category N Motor vehicles with at least four wheels designed and constructed for the carriage of goods.

The rules further say provided that in case of any vehicle which is sold in the form of drive-away-chassis without windscreen, such FASTag shall be fitted in the windscreen by the dealer at the time of providing such windscreen.

“The fitment of FASTag shall be verified by the registering authority at the time of registration. For the purposes of this rule, FASTag means an onboard unit (transponder) or any such device fitted on the front windscreen of the vehicle,” added the rules.

As on March 2017, the participating banks are SBI, KVB, ICICI, AXIS, IDFC and Equitas SF Bank and a total 3,47,200 electronic tags have been issued for fee collection on National Highways.

As of now, about 352 toll plazas have FASTag facility with dedicated lanes. For making an electronic payment at toll booths, a prepaid Radio Frequency Identification Device (RFID) tag known as FASTag is affixed on the windscreen of a vehicle. Toll payments are made directly from the pre-paid account linked to it and as a vehicle crosses a toll plaza, the information written on the FASTag is captured by a reader installed at the toll plaza.

The immediate use of FASTags will entail a 10 percent discount on the toll fee, in addition to faster movement through dedicated lanes at the Toll Plazas. The cash back amount for a particular month is credited back to the FASTag account at the beginning of the next month.

National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had rolled out cashless payment mechanism (FASTag) on toll plazas on National Highways in April 2016.