NHAI pushes for removal of Gurgaon toll plaza

NEW DELHI: Delhi-Gurgaon commuters may soon zip through the expressway without stopping at the 32-lane toll plaza. The National Highways Authority of India ( NHAI) has asked the expressway project’s lead lender and its concessionaire to come up with a proposal to remove the toll plaza, which is the source of peak-hour traffic jams every day. Around two lakh vehicles go through the toll plaza every day. At peak hours, cars constitute 72% of the traffic and the wait time can be as long as 10 minutes.

A top NHAI official confirmed the move to remove the plaza. He told TOI that even the second plaza at KM 42 (Kherki Dhaula ) could be shifted further down the road towards Jaipur so that it falls outside city limits.

“This arrangement would mean a large number of vehicles plying between Gurgaon and Delhi won’t be subjected to traffic snarls and won’t have to pay toll. On the other hand, the traffic towards Jaipur would pay full toll at a single point outside Gurgaon,” said the official.

Sources said the nittygritty of the arrangement is yet to be worked out.

‘Purchasing’ project suits Hooda

These would be proposed by the project’s lender and concessionaire. They added that at present around Rs 18 crore per month is collected as toll from both plazas on the expressway — roughly Rs 12 crore at the 32-lane toll plaza and Rs 6 crore at km 42 toll plaza. In case the first plaza is done away with, the overall toll collection would fall to Rs 10 crore, which would make the plan financially viable for concessionaire Delhi-Gurgaon Super Connectivity Ltd and the lead lender, Infrastructure Finance Development Company.

DGSCL had taken a loan of Rs 1,567 crore from a consortium of banks led by IDFC for this project. Officials familiar with the development said recovering this net present value of the project from asingle toll plaza would be impossible. If the plan to remove the 32-lane plaza goes ahead, both the lender and the concessionaire would take a financial hit.

In this case, the Haryana government could step in to compensate the project operator and lender. Chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had shown interest last November in “purchasing” the project to make expressway travel hassle free. This would also suit his government in an election year, considering the huge public demand to remove the toll plaza and treat the expressway as an urban road connecting two cities. These talks are on even as all the three parties – NHAI, IDFC and DGSCL – have filed cases against each other in the Delhi High Court. In the last hearing, IDFC had sought time from the court to put forward a settlement proposal . The court had allowed all parties to come out with a settlement and had fixed the next date for hearing to May 2.