FASTag toll collection on national highways grows 14.4% to ₹70,278 crore in FY26

Toll collection through the FASTag electronic tolling system on national highways rose nearly 14.4% year-on-year to ₹70,278.18 crore in 2025-26, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

User fee collection through FASTag stood at ₹61,408.15 crore in 2024-25 and ₹55,882.12 crore in 2023-24, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

The minister said the government has periodically reviewed the toll pricing mechanism to reduce the burden on road users and has introduced several measures over the past year.

Gadkari mentioned the annual pass among such measures, under which non-commercial cars, jeeps and vans, can avail up to 200 crossings at national highway fee plazas or one year of validity, whichever is earlier, for ₹3,075 in 2026-27.

The government has also amended rules to reduce toll charges on highways with a higher proportion of structures, lower user fees for upgraded highways, and cut the penalty for vehicles without an active FASTag from double the toll to 1.25 times if payment is made through UPI.

Gadkari said all toll plaza lanes on national highways have been operating as FASTag lanes since February 2021.

According to a 2024-25 impact assessment of the National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) programme, the average time taken by a vehicle to cross a toll plaza has fallen to about 40 seconds under electronic toll collection from 12.23 minutes under the earlier manual system.

He added that toll plaza congestion is also being monitored through a GIS-based solution.

The minister said the government has decided to implement Multi-Lane Free Flow (MLFF) tolling using Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), artificial intelligence-based analytics and FASTag to enable barrier-less toll collection.

The barrier-free tolling system has been awarded for implementation at 17 toll plazas, of which five — Choryasi in Gujarat's Surat, Mundka in Delhi, Gharaunda in Haryana, and Manoharpura and Daulatpura in Rajasthan — are already operational, he said.

Gadkari added that 104 toll plazas have been identified for implementation of the MLFF barrier-less tolling mechanism.