All toll plazas on NHs will become FASTag enabled from Oct 1

New Delhi, Aug 17 :  From October 1, all lanes of the 371 toll plazas on the National Highways across the country will become FASTag enabled. “One lane in every toll plaza will be a dedicated FASTag lane where no other form of payment will be accepted, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) Chairman, Deepak Kumar said here today. The other lanes, though FASTag enabled, could accept other forms of payment too. The dedicated FASTag lanes would become operational on all 371 NHAI toll plazas from September 1, he said. Mr Kumar launched two mobile Apps – MyFASTag and FASTag Partner, to facilitate the availability of FASTags for Electronic Toll Collection (ETC). Speaking on the occasion he said the cumbersome method of purchase and recharge of FASTags was one of the major challenges with the ETC project. “The mobile apps launched today will ease the process, making it possible to buy or recharge FASTags at the click of a mobile button,” he added. “More than six lakh FASTags have been sold and NHAI is hopeful that there would be a quantum jump in this regard. This will give the much needed push to the ETC project that aims to make travel more convenient, faster and environment friendly for people,” he said. MyFASTag was a consumer app that could be downloaded from the App Store for both Android and iOS systems. A consumer can purchase or recharge FASTags on this App. It also helps to keep track of transactions and provides for online grievance redressal. FASTag Partner is a merchant App and agencies like Common Services Centre (CSC), banking partners and vehicle dealers can sell and enroll FASTag through this app. In addition to this, the app could also be used to activate the RFID tags that came built in with around 74-lakh cars in the country following the 2013 Gazette Notification in this regard. These RFID tags are already fixed on the cars but are dormant. This App would convert these RFID tags into ETC Tag (FASTag). Besides, the NHAI had also come up with online sale of FASTags and offline sale through CSC near toll plazas. FASTag could now be purchased online from Issuer Banks websites or NHAI website or IHMCL website and would be delivered by courier at door step of the purchaser. From tomorrow FASTags could also be bought from sale points of CSC to be set up near toll plazas. UNI