UPSRTC suffers loss due to delayed implementation of NETC programme

LUCKNOW: It was the failure in the timely implementation of the National Electronics Toll Collection (NETC) programme of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) which deprived UP State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) of cashback discount of Rs 14.1 crore on payment of tolls worth Rs 340.4 crore, done manually and without using FASTag, during July 2017 to March 2019, said a Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report 2020.
The corporation had planned to implement the programme fully with effect from June 21, 2017.
The CAG report said that an analysis of the data pertaining to payment of tolls by UPSRTC — after June 2017, and between July 2017 and March 2020 — revealed that out of the total toll of Rs 624.3 crore, only Rs 283.8 crore (46.4%) was paid through FASTag on which cashback of only Rs 13.4 crore was received.
Further analysis of the data of 20 regions of UPSRTC for the period July 2017-March 2020 revealed that against the fleet of 12,155 buses, NETC programme was implemented in 6,827 buses only (56.1%) by July 2017.
"This position remained almost stagnant till March 2018 (56.3%) and March 2019 (56.2%) and increased to 79.2% by March 2020," said the report.
The 20 regions were Bareilly, Chitrakoot, Gorakhpur, Noida, Aligarh, Lucknow, Azamgarh, Agra, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Jhansi, Meerut, Saharanpur, Hardoi, Prayagraj, Etawah, Devipatan, Ghaziabad, Kanpur and Moradabad.
NETC programme allows electronic payment of tolls on NHs using FASTag. As an incentive to implement the programme, NHAI provided discounts in the form of cashback payout for the NETC transactions during 2016-17 to 2019-20, provided that certain terms and conditions were met.
The NHAI invited UPSRTC to participate in the programme on January 16, 2017 and avail discounts.
Following which, the UPSRTC invited proposals from three banks on February 10, 2017 to implement the programme and selected SBI and Axis Bank as partner banks and executed agreements with them, on April 10, 2017, for a period of five years.
The Corporation also constituted a monitoring committee of seven officers on May 30, 2017 to ensure that tolls were paid by all the regions through FASTag from June 21, 2017.
However, an audit done in March 2021 noticed that despite all necessary arrangements, UPSRTC failed to implement the NETC programme fully with effect from June 21, 2017.