Toll collection commences at Kharghar, state says no plans of rollback for now

A trip from Mumbai to Pune in a car will set back people by Rs 260 as toll as against Rs 230 that was being paid earlier. The BJP government has, meanwhile, claimed that there is no immediate plan of withdrawing the toll.earlier. The BJP government has, meanwhile, claimed that there is no immediate plan of withdrawing the toll.

“The state government has never said that it will abolish toll. This project was sanctioned five years back and inspite of the government being in power for more than two months we did not give them sanction to collect toll. The operators had approached the Bombay High Court which ordered the state to give the sanction. We have given the go ahead for toll collection because of the Court’s order,” PWD Minister Chandrakant Patil said.

Patil also claimed that his party had never given an assurance of abolishing toll and any move in that direction was unlikely.

“Our leaders never claimed that toll will be completely abolished. We will, however, work towards ensuring that local people are not affected by this toll collections. We have excluded five villages that are in the proximity of the plaza from toll collections . We will try to exclude more villagers in the future,” Patil said.

The BJP has come under flak for allowing toll collection in Kharghar which would mean that commuters will end up paying toll twice in a distance of less than 20 km between Vashi and Kharghar. The Sion-Panvel highway improvement project involved widening of the 23-km Sion-Panvel road to 10 lanes and making it signal-free for six lanes. The road has slashed travel time between Kalamboli and BARC junction by more than 30 minutes.

The Rs 1,700 crore project had been awarded to the Sion-Panvel Tollways Project Limited (SPTPL), an SPV floated by Essel Infra, which was awarded the Build Operate Transfer Project by the PWD for a period of 17 years.
The company had been undertaking dry runs for the toll collections for the past few days. However the actual collection which commenced early Tuesday morning caused some traffic snarls. Meanwhile early in the morning miscreants damaged two toll booths and fled.

Meanwhile, local activists are not happy that only five villages of Panvel, New Panvel, Kamothe, Kalamboli and Kharghar have been exempted from paying toll. They have claimed that the entire toll collection should
be scrapped.

Local MLA Prashant Thakur had quit the Congress and fought the elections on a BJP ticket after opposing the toll collection in Kharghar. Thakur claimed that the he would ensure that the BJP government gave a complete waiver to local residents. “My fight to ensure that all residents of nearby areas are exempted will continue. I am in talks with the government which is presently looking at ways to find a solution to this problem,” Panvel MLA Prashant Thakur said.

Parties like the Peasants and Workers Party of India have however claimed that they will continue to agitate against the BJP government which has gone back on its word after promising to withdraw toll.