Get FASTag by December 1 or Pay Double at Toll Gates

Nitin Gadkari, Road Transport and Highways Minister announced in October that FASTags would become mandatory for all vehicles from December 2019. Any private or commercial vehicle, which has the FASTag will be able to make contactless payments swiftly at toll plazas on national highways.

From December 1, if vehicle users do not adopt the FASTag mode of payment, they need to pay double the regular fee at toll gates.

FASTags comes under the National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) program, which is developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

R K Suryawanshi, regional officer, National Highways of India, Bengaluru, told TNIE that this step had recently been notified in the government gazette too. "Any vehicle user without FASTag entering into a 'FASTag lane' at any NH fee plaza has to pay a fee equivalent to two times the applicable fee for that specific category of vehicle," he said.

What is FASTag?

A FASTag is a tag that you attach to the windshield of your car. This is Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) enabled and is linked to your vehicle registration. When you drive through any toll plaza, that has FASTag readers installed overhead. As your vehicle passes beneath them, the RFID code is detected, read, the required amount is deducted from the prepaid balance, and your journey through the toll plaza is authenticated. FASTag is simple to use and reloadable tag.

Where can one get FASTag?

FASTag can be bought from 28,500 points of sale locations set up at various banks, the National Highway and the Indian Highways Management Corporation Ltd, a company set up by NHAI. "This includes all NH fee plazas, RTOs, common service centres, bank branches, transport hubs and selected petrol bunks," says an official release from NHAI.

If you own a car, van or jeep, the FASTag may be bought online from Amazon.in or approach individual banks for these FASTags. The banks that are offering FASTags are HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank and also the Airtel Payments Bank and Paytm Payments Bank.

Download my FASTag App to search for the nearest point of sale location or visit www.ihmcl.com or call 1033. NHAI/IHMCL has developed a UPI recharge facility via MY FASTag app for recharge. You can also recharge FASTag by visiting the bank's portals.