Maharashtra, among the first states in India to privatise roads and toll collection, has seen frequent eruptions of anti-toll protests from various quarters. Last year, members of Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena party went on a violent rampage at toll booths across the state to make their point. Back in 2011, activist Anna Hazare had protested against toll booth agencies for collecting tax even after their contracts with the government had expired.
On Monday, veteran rationalist and social activist Govind Pansare, who had recently been protesting against a major road and toll company, was shot at four times by unidentified assailants in Kolhapur. The police is yet to make headway in the case, but Pansare’s condition is now stable. Besides highlighting the rising attacks on social activists in the state, the shooting has also brought Maharashtra’s controversial toll collection practices back into the limelight.
The state has nearly 170 toll points that have been collecting an average of Rs 750 crore annually. Transport experts, activists and road users have, for the past few years, been questioning the validity of collecting tolls on a range of new roads through a system that is not transparent and is increasingly controlled by private companies.
Private roads
Traditionally, highways and roads were built by various state agencies, but in the mid-1990s, the BJP-Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government began encouraging road privatisation through a process called build-operate-transfer. Since then, thousands of kilometres of roads have been built, at the cost of several thousand crores, by private companies such as Ashok Buildcon, IL&FS Transportation and Sadbhav Infrastructure.
Perhaps the biggest player, however, is the IRB group, which has two subsidiary entities involved in building roads in Maharashtra: Mumbai Entry Point, which controls toll collection on all the five roads leading out of Mumbai city, and the larger IRB Infrastructure Developers.
Until eight months ago, IRB Infrastructure was being scrutinised for suspected involvement in the 2010 murder of Pune-based RTI activist Satish Shetty, who was seeking information on IRB’s alleged land-grabbing in the district. After closing the case in July 2014, the Central Bureau of Investigation decided to reopen Shetty’s murder case on Monday – the day Pansare was shot – in the light of new evidence found from IRB offices.
IRB Infrastructure also happens to be the company Pansare and others were protesting against, for allegedly charging double the official toll rate in Kolhapur.
How should tolls work?
Various allegations of corruption against private toll agencies reflect a deeper problem in the system, says urban planner Pankaj Joshi – authorities are treating toll collection as a means of revenue collection. “Internationally, the fundamental premise of a toll is to recover the cost of construction,” said Joshi, executive director of the Mumbai-based think tank Urban Design Research Institute.
When the state allows a private agency to collect a toll for a fixed number of years, the toll rate is based, among other things, on the estimated density of traffic and it allows for a certain margin of profit for the agency. But if the number of vehicles using the tolled road shoots up faster than expected – as has been the case in urban Maharashtra the toll rates should be brought down. Instead, says Joshi, tolls have only been increasing over the years.
“A toll basically has to work like an EMI [to pay back a home loan],” said Joshi. If an agency collects money over and above the recovery of its costs, and after making its determined margin of profit, then it is in violation of its contract. He added, “At the moment, this is happening all over the country.”
Dayanand Nadkar, general-secretary of the Truck and Tempo Mahasangh in Mumbai, remembers a time, about 15 years ago, when heavy vehicles that did not want to use tolled roads to get from one city to another had the option of taking a free service road. At that time, tolls were collected only for bridges over creeks and railway lines. But then, the state government began initiating numerous public-private partnerships to build roads.
“Now, every single route leading outside the city, as well as the old Mumbai-Pune Highway, is tolled,” said Nadkar. “I would not mind paying for good roads if they provide us with basic amenities such as toilets, ambulance services and, in the case of heavy vehicles, enough space for emergency parking on the side. But these are not provided, so I should have the option of using a service road.”
The provision of such amenities is among the things that the MNS has been agitating about in Maharashtra. “In other states like Karnataka, all the basic facilities are provided and the toll charge is lower,” claimed Pravin Darekar, an MNS general secretary.
Despite this, some believe the collection of tolls cannot – and must not – be stopped, but for different reasons.
Ashok Datar, a transport analyst and chairman of the non-profit Mumbai Environmental Social Network, recommends that tolling should continue as a kind of congestion charge even after the state has recovered its construction costs. In such a scenario, however, Datar recommends tolling only private vehicles. “This would give an incentive to people to use more public transport,” he said.
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On Monday, veteran rationalist and social activist Govind Pansare, who had recently been protesting against a major road and toll company, was shot at four times by unidentified assailants in Kolhapur. The police is yet to make headway in the case, but Pansare’s condition is now stable. Besides highlighting the rising attacks on social activists in the state, the shooting has also brought Maharashtra’s controversial toll collection practices back into the limelight.
The state has nearly 170 toll points that have been collecting an average of Rs 750 crore annually. Transport experts, activists and road users have, for the past few years, been questioning the validity of collecting tolls on a range of new roads through a system that is not transparent and is increasingly controlled by private companies.
Private roads
Traditionally, highways and roads were built by various state agencies, but in the mid-1990s, the BJP-Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government began encouraging road privatisation through a process called build-operate-transfer. Since then, thousands of kilometres of roads have been built, at the cost of several thousand crores, by private companies such as Ashok Buildcon, IL&FS Transportation and Sadbhav Infrastructure.
Perhaps the biggest player, however, is the IRB group, which has two subsidiary entities involved in building roads in Maharashtra: Mumbai Entry Point, which controls toll collection on all the five roads leading out of Mumbai city, and the larger IRB Infrastructure Developers.
Until eight months ago, IRB Infrastructure was being scrutinised for suspected involvement in the 2010 murder of Pune-based RTI activist Satish Shetty, who was seeking information on IRB’s alleged land-grabbing in the district. After closing the case in July 2014, the Central Bureau of Investigation decided to reopen Shetty’s murder case on Monday – the day Pansare was shot – in the light of new evidence found from IRB offices.
IRB Infrastructure also happens to be the company Pansare and others were protesting against, for allegedly charging double the official toll rate in Kolhapur.
How should tolls work?
Various allegations of corruption against private toll agencies reflect a deeper problem in the system, says urban planner Pankaj Joshi – authorities are treating toll collection as a means of revenue collection. “Internationally, the fundamental premise of a toll is to recover the cost of construction,” said Joshi, executive director of the Mumbai-based think tank Urban Design Research Institute.
When the state allows a private agency to collect a toll for a fixed number of years, the toll rate is based, among other things, on the estimated density of traffic and it allows for a certain margin of profit for the agency. But if the number of vehicles using the tolled road shoots up faster than expected – as has been the case in urban Maharashtra the toll rates should be brought down. Instead, says Joshi, tolls have only been increasing over the years.
“A toll basically has to work like an EMI [to pay back a home loan],” said Joshi. If an agency collects money over and above the recovery of its costs, and after making its determined margin of profit, then it is in violation of its contract. He added, “At the moment, this is happening all over the country.”
Dayanand Nadkar, general-secretary of the Truck and Tempo Mahasangh in Mumbai, remembers a time, about 15 years ago, when heavy vehicles that did not want to use tolled roads to get from one city to another had the option of taking a free service road. At that time, tolls were collected only for bridges over creeks and railway lines. But then, the state government began initiating numerous public-private partnerships to build roads.
“Now, every single route leading outside the city, as well as the old Mumbai-Pune Highway, is tolled,” said Nadkar. “I would not mind paying for good roads if they provide us with basic amenities such as toilets, ambulance services and, in the case of heavy vehicles, enough space for emergency parking on the side. But these are not provided, so I should have the option of using a service road.”
The provision of such amenities is among the things that the MNS has been agitating about in Maharashtra. “In other states like Karnataka, all the basic facilities are provided and the toll charge is lower,” claimed Pravin Darekar, an MNS general secretary.
Despite this, some believe the collection of tolls cannot – and must not – be stopped, but for different reasons.
Ashok Datar, a transport analyst and chairman of the non-profit Mumbai Environmental Social Network, recommends that tolling should continue as a kind of congestion charge even after the state has recovered its construction costs. In such a scenario, however, Datar recommends tolling only private vehicles. “This would give an incentive to people to use more public transport,” he said.