According to sources, the first day of FASTag implementation saw traffic snarls across the toll plazas at Tamilnadu's national highways. In the meantime, cash lanes were used with snail-paced vehicular movement, FASTag lanes were visually empty. Further, one of the major snags observed by NHAI officials, according to the report, was that the FASTags with the account linked to the amount of the toll amount. The vehicular pile-up was also observed in the toll plazas at Chengalpattu near Paranur, Katpadi near Vaniyambadi and madurai in Kappalur. Users have also complained of FASTags in which they had enough balance in the wallets, but the tags were blacklisted.
Apparently the Union government recently made it mandatory for all vehicles using toll plazas in the country to be affiliated with FASTags on the windscreens. Meanwhile these are Radio Frequency Identity (RFID) tags that enable easy passage through a toll booth. The owner of the FASTag wallet will be automatically deducted from the vehicle, and the toll ticket amount of each lane will be fixed in the scanners fixed. Perhaps in tamilnadu, there are 48 toll plazas with the National Highways Authority of india (NHAI) under the control of 482 lanes of highways. The government had extended the deadline to december 15 to implement FASTags across the country. Previously on sunday, all the toll plazas had one cash lane while the other lanes were converted to 'FASTag only' lanes.
Moreover, the Union government extended the deadline for FASTags to be fitted with another 30 days after the NHAI wrote to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH), seeking an extension to FASTags in the market. The tags (RFID chips) are imported and the entire process takes around six weeks to complete.
