Important news for motorists. Now toll tax will not be collected from these people on the highway. Let’s know in the news below whose names are in the final list.
If you have ever traveled from Delhi to Lucknow in your private car, then you must have learned one thing. That is, the toll tax of about 1100 rupees to be charged for this distance of about 500 km. In fact, with the laying of a network of expressways and better roads in the country, the issue of heavy toll tax has also become very important.
At present, toll tax is being collected on almost all the expressways and highways of the country. In the journey from Delhi to Lucknow, you have to pay toll tax three times. First on Jaypee Expressway between Greater Noida to Agra, after that you have to pay a toll tax in Agra. Then you have to pay a tax of Rs 600 for the 302 km long expressway from Agra to Lucknow.
The irony is that the entire burden of such toll tax is put on the common man only. According to the rules of the Central Government, at present no toll tax is collected from 25 types of vehicles. The funny thing is that till about a decade back only 9 categories of vehicles were exempted from toll tax which has increased to 25 today.
They got discount
This list includes the names of big officers including the President, Vice President, Prime Minister, Ministers to MPs and Judges and Magistrates.
According to a report, officials of various ministries do not pay toll tax even during private travel. India is probably the first democratic country in the world to have such a long list of toll tax exemptions.
According to the report, between the year 2000 and 2010, there were only 9 such categories under which people were exempted from toll tax. This included defence, police, fire fighting, ambulance, hearse vehicles, selected state and central government officials, President, Prime Minister, MPs and MLAs. But today this category has increased to 25. In this, magistrates, secretaries, secretaries of various departments, officers of the National Highway Authority have been included. Apart from this, the state governments have their own list of people to be covered.
Toll game is opaque
Actually, there is a lack of transparency in the books of toll collecting companies in India. The public does not know how their accounts are maintained. There are many such reports that the toll tax collecting companies understate the number of vehicles passing through there so that they can collect toll for more than the prescribed period.
This report states that data collected through RTI shows that many companies recovered the cost of road construction through toll collection within 5 to 7 years but they have been allowed to collect toll for 20 years . This was done because of non-disclosure of matters.
Powerful bureaucracy
In a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the year 2017, a ‘Zero Transaction’ RFID tag was proposed to prevent misuse of exempted categories at toll plazas. There was a proposal to put this tag on the vehicles of the exempted people, but the matter did not progress further. It was said in the reports that this was not done under pressure from the bureaucracy.
Car drivers pay tax on tax
Owning a car in India has always been a luxury in the eyes of the government. Only then tax is collected from the car owners on the tactic. A typical car owner pays at least four types of taxes in the country. This includes motor vehicle tax, passenger and goods tax, one time road tax and cess on petrol and diesel.
