Mid-Day: Mumbai: Wednesday,
February 01, 2017.
You've
exacted your toll; now, put an end to the brazenness. That's the plea from a
group of activists to the state government with respect to toll collection on
the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.
At a press
conference in the city yesterday, the activists Pravin Wategaonkar, Shrinivas
Ghanekar, Vivek Velankar and Sanjay Shirodhkar claimed that the toll
operator, IRB Infrastructure, surpassed its 2019 target collection of Rs 2,869
crore by October-end last year. They said a toll of Rs 2,923 crore was
collected till the end of December, 2016, thereby doing away with the need for
future collections.
The
expressway was made fully operational in 2002. In 2004, IRB won the contract
for toll collection of Rs 2,869 crore till August 2019 against an upfront
payment of '910 crore. "But according to figures we have received, it has
already collected Rs 2,923 crore," said Shirodkar.
To press the
government to act on their findings, the activists wrote a letter to Chief
Minister Devendra Fadnavis on January 18, urging him to scrap toll collection
on the expressway within 15 days.
"We have
warned the state government that if it doesn't rescind the toll operator's
contract, we will approach the High Court against it under the Prevention of
Corruption Act," said Shirodkar.
All findings
were based on responses to RTI applications and the website of the Maharashtra
State Regional Development Corporation (MSRDC), which maintains the expressway.
The contract between the MSRDC and IRB has no mention of what was to happen
once the target toll was collected.
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