A transparent system for movement of cargo through over dimensional vehicles has been launched and online nod for movement of 5,000 such vehicles including machinery has been given, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said today.
"The online permission has been introduced to weed out corruption from the system besides faster movement of cargo," Gadkari, Minister for Road, Transport and Highways said at an event here.
This will end the prevalent middlemen and lengthy and time-consuming paperwork involved in the process, the Minister said adding that as per estimates an annual loss to the tune of Rs 1.3 lakh crore occurred due to delays and fuel consumption at toll plazas.
His Ministry, Gadkari said, is committed to introduce a transparent system in all streams and online permission system and for over dimensional cargo was one such step.
At the same time, he urged over dimensional vehicles to get FASTags for seamless movements at toll plazas.
Over dimensional cargo is a shipment system that is normally bigger than standard container in length, breadth and height
To this the industry members urged him to ensure fast-tag availability for such vehicles.
To ensure non-stop vehicle movement at toll plazas, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has rolled out cashless payment mechanism FASTag at 275 tolls across the country.
FASTag offers near non-stop movement of vehicles through toll plazas and convenience of cashless payments of toll fee with nationwide inter-operable electronic toll collection services.
The facility has a one-time fee of Rs 200 and is affixed on the wind screen of the vehicle.
It employs RFID technology for making toll payments directly from the pre-paid account linked to it. A vehicle using FASTag will use dedicated FASTag lane to have cashless travel.
