New Delhi, February 16 The new rule of Fastag is coming into effect from Monday. Under this, users who have low balance in Fastag, delay in payment or Fastag blacklist, will be charged an additional fine.
The government’s objective behind implementing this rule is to reduce the long queues of vehicles at the toll due to problems in Fastag and to make travel convenient.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways have released some important changes in the Fastag ecosystem, which aims to streamline toll payments, reduce disputes and curb fraud.
The new Fastag rule will come into effect from February 17.
Under the new rules, if the Fastag remains inactive for more than 60 minutes before the vehicle crosses the toll and remains inactive for 10 minutes after crossing the toll, the transaction will be rejected. The system will reject such payments by writing ‘Error Code 176’.
Additionally, changes have been made to the chargeback process and cooling period as well as transaction rejection rules to simplify toll payments and reduce disputes.
According to the new guidelines, if the toll transaction is done more than 15 minutes after the vehicle passes through the toll reader, then Fastag users may have to pay additional charges.
According to the updated National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) guidelines, if there is a delay in any transaction and the user has low balance in his Fastag account, then the toll operator will be held responsible.
Earlier, users could recharge Fastag at the toll booth itself and proceed further. After the new rule, now users will have to recharge Fastag first.
According to the latest data of NPCI, the number of Fastag transactions has increased by 6 percent to 38.2 crores in December, which was 35.9 crores in November.
Also, the value of Fastag transactions has increased by 9 percent It has increased to Rs 6,642 crore, which was Rs 6,070 crore in November.
