(This story originally appeared in on Sep 04, 2015)

NEW DELHI: The day TOI front-paged a report on the toll being hiked on a potholed Gurgaon-Jaipur highway, in violation of the Supreme Court observation that poorly maintained roads should not charge toll at all, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on Thursday said it was rolling back the hike till proper maintenance of the entire stretch is completed. This is for the first time in NHAI's history, hiked toll charges have been deferred by the authority and a concessionaire.The decision was taken after a review meeting at NHAI headquarters on the progress of work. The meeting was triggered by the TOI report. NHAI collects 53% of the toll on this highway which has been a mess for years now. And every year it hikes the toll by 1%. While it has rolled back the hike, it hasn't - as told by the SC - to scrap tolling altogether until the road is properly repaired."The concessionaire has agreed to defer the hike in the toll rates with immediate effect. NHAI is prevailing upon the concessionaire to complete main carriageway and other works expeditiously," the highway authority said. Sources said that the progress of work and the condition of the road will be reviewed before allowing the concessionaire to collected hiked toll.Sending a strong message to all stakeholders in highways projects on how they must put their efforts together to expedite work for convenience of commuters, NHAI chairman Raghav Chandra told TOI, "All concessionaires and stakeholders must realize the criticality of timely project completion. Citizens' comfort has to be given precedence over everything else," he said.Sources said that about 13-14km stretch of this 231 km highway is in bad shape because of diversions. They added that about 90% work has been completed on this entire corridor and about Rs 3,000 crore has been spent for six-laning of the road.The project was awarded in 2009 with 12 years of concession period. The concessionaire was allowed to charge toll from day one. "Although 90% of the work is completed, yet owing to various constraints (such as initial delay in handing over of encumbrance free land, cash flow problem faced by the concessionaire in obtaining debt from the lenders etc) the project completion has been delayed and some structures remain to be constructed," NHAI said.According to officials, as per Toll Rules of 1997, which was prevailing at the time when the concession agreement was signed, toll on this stretch is revised annually and becomes effective from September 1.