Maharashtra will offer more toll-based road contracts in the near future, with the state government making it clear that it has no plans to discontinue building roads on the toll concept. Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar said in the Legislative Assembly Monday that the government had never announced that it won’t permit building of road on the toll model in future. In the run-up to the election campaign in Maharashtra in 2014, former Union minister (late) Gopinath Munde had made an announcement for a toll-free Maharashtra. While incumbent Union Surface Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari had subsequently said this won’t be economically viable, the BJP partially delivered on Munde’s promise by waiving the toll for two- and four-wheelers, besides state transport buses, at a majority of the existing toll plazas in the state. [related-post] Mungantiwar, however, said Monday the toll-based road building model would not be discontinued. He was replying to a discussion on the government’s budget for 2016-17. The finance minister’s budget speech had spelt out the government’s plan to build new roads on annuity basis. NCP’s Jayant Patil had questioned whether the annuity model was nothing but reincarnation of toll-based BOT projects. Mungantiwar said the government had never announced that it would discontinue building roads on BOT basis. Violent protests have been witnessed over toll projects in the past few years. Meanwhile, the finance minister admitted that the deficit projected between revenue income and spending for 2016-17 did not augur well for the state. “Incidence of revenue deficit is a matter of concern. But it may take some time to reverse the phenomenon of revenue deficit and achieve a nil level. After all, we have inherited an economy that had fallen into revenue deficit of Rs 12,137 crore in 2014-15,” Mungantiwar said, firing a barb at the Congress-NCP regime. Also, while rebutting the Opposition’s claim that allocations earmarked for public investment in the crisis-laden farm and allied sector were misleading, the finance minister admitted that the amount set aside for the irrigation sector (Rs 7,800 crore) was insufficient. “I agree with you (the Opposition) that we must borrow loans and make more funds available for irrigation projects,” he said.
