Govt extends mandatory FASTag roll out date
New Delhi, Nov 29: The government on Friday announced extending the date to December 15 for making FASTag mandatory for toll payments on national highways.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had earlier announced that from December 1, toll payments on highways would be accepted through FASTags only.
"To facilitate sufficient lead time to citizens to obtain FASTag, it has now been decided that all the lanes in the Fee plazas shall be declared as 'FASTag lane of Fee Plaza' by December 15, 2019," a Ministry of Road Transport and Highways communication said.
The National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) programme, the flagship initiative of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, has been implemented on a pan-India basis in order to remove bottlenecks and ensure seamless movement of traffic and collection of user fee as per the notified rates, using passive radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.
Over 70 lakh FASTags had been issued till Wednesday, with the highest per-day issuance of 1,35,583 tags on November 26, 2019, whereas 1.03 lakh tags were issued on the day before.
The average daily issuance had grown by 330 per cent from 8,000 in July to 35,000 tags sold in November 2019 after the Government announced to implement it from December 1.
After announcement of waiver of tag cost from November 21, there has been a growth in FASTag issuance.
To give a fillip to digital payments and bring in enhanced transparency, the ministry had directed to declare all lanes of fee plazas on national highways as 'FASTag lanes' by December 1.
However, one lane in each direction was decided to be kept as 'hybrid lane' which will accept FASTag and other modes of payment..
"With the above mandate, average daily transactions processed through FASTag have grown from 8.8 lakh in July this year to 11.2 lakh transactions in November 2019, while the average daily collection has grown from Rs 11.2 crore to Rs 19.5 crore for the given period," the ministry has said earlier this week.
All the available mode of recharges such as debit card, credit card, net banking and Unified Payments Interface have been enabled for loading money to the FASTag account.
A customer may call on the helpline number, '1033', for any assistance related to FASTags, the ministry said and added that they can also reach out to the banks to obtain FASTags.
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Unemployed 'youngsters like cockroaches' become media, activists; attack system: CJI
New Delhi (PTI): Likening some unemployed youngsters to cockroaches, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Friday said they go on to "become" media, social media and RTI activists and start attacking the system.
The comments came while a bench of CJI Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was pulling up a lawyer for "pursuing" a senior advocate designation. It said there were already "parasites" in society who attack the system and asked the petitioner whether he wanted to join hands with them.
"The entire world may be eligible to become senior (advocate), but at least you are not entitled," the bench told the petitioner lawyer.
A visibly anguished CJI observed that if the Delhi High Court would confer senior advocate designation upon the petitioner, the apex court would set that aside seeing his professional conduct.
The CJI also referred to the kind of language used by the petitioner on Facebook.
"There are already parasites of society who attack the system and you want to join hands with them?" he said.
"There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don't get any employment or have any place in profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists and they start attacking everyone," he said.
The bench also asked the petitioner whether he did not have any other litigation.
"Is this the conduct of a person who seeks to be designated as a senior advocate?" the bench asked.
It said senior advocate designation is something that is conferred on a person and is not to be pursued.
"You are pursuing it. Does it look proper?" the top court said, asking whether a senior advocate designation was a status symbol to be kept ornamentally.
It also observed that it wanted to ask the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to verify the degrees of many of those who were wearing black robes as there were serious doubts over the genuineness of their degrees.
It said the Bar Council of India would never do anything on this issue as they "need their votes".
The petitioner apologised to the bench and sought permission to withdraw the petition. The bench allowed the withdrawal of the petition.
