To end long snarls, 13 RFID-enabled toll plazas to go cashless

The 13 toll plazas that are entry/exit points to and from Delhi and have been equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) system will now go cashless for commercial vehicles from September 13 midnight.

Till now, RFID tagged commercial vehicles were exempted from paying higher municipal toll and environment compensation charge (ECC). However, many would opt to recharge their RFID account at the toll plaza instead of doing it online.

Not any more, said Bhure Lal, chairperson of the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority [EPCA], the Supreme Court-appointed body that mandated the system.

“Without going cashless the entire objective behind introducing RFID at the entry points is getting defeated. There are long queues at the entry points. Going cashless would bring down human interference and hence improve integrity of the system. It would also save time,” said Bhure Lal, chairman of EPCA.

Commercial vehicle drivers can recharge their RFID accounts either online or pay cash at the 28 point of sale (PoS) kiosks at the entry/exit points. If they do not, they would be turned away from the plaza, said Lal.

Till date, around 306,000 commercial vehicles got the RFID tags and documents for another 30,000 are being processed, only 429 transactions have been made suing online facilities.

Even though RFID has been introduced at 13 entry points, officials said that more entry point would be included in phases. Around 80% of commercial vehicles that enter Delhi pass through these points. The decision was taken Tuesday after EPCA held a meeting with SDMC, nodal agency implementing the project.

“The website which has been launched would help vehicle owners to pre-register and upload documents for receiving the RFID tag. After registration the customer can log in to recharge the RFID account using debit/credit card or netbanking,” said a senior official of SDMC.

SDMC officials said that at present vehicle owners are sending their documents through emails to get the tags. Henceforth documents won’t be accepted on email. They can only be uploaded on the website. “The applications and documents that we were receiving had several errors. Some owners didn’t even reveal their phone numbers. All these would be a thing of the past as owners won’t be able to move to the next page on the website unless then provide all documents,” said the SDMC official.

First Published: Sep 04, 2019 08:42 IST