Toll booth to earn Rs 4461 crore by 2028: DCC vice-president Joseph Tajet

THRISSUR: National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) fixed the toll collection period for the Paliyekkara Toll Plaza on Mannuthy-Angamaly-Edappally NH from 2012 to 2028 without any study on vehicular traffic or revenue projection. DCC vice-president Joseph Tajet, a petitioner in High Court against alleged violations of the toll company, got an RTI reply from the NHAI saying the concessionaire, Guruvayoor Infrastructure Private Ltd (GIPL), had made the traffic and revenue projection at their risk while bidding and it had no estimates.

Mr Tajet said the company would get a windfall of Rs 4,461.02 crore when the contract ends in 2028, as per a recent study by Prof V. M. Chacko, head of the department of statistics, St Thomas College here. Until January 2018, the company has collected Rs 539.52 crore. The total cost of the project as per the RTI reply is Rs 725.82 crore. Going by this data, the toll company will take away sixfold the amount they spent.

The study has taken into account the increase in the number of vehicles per day from 11,000 in 2012 to 23,000 in 2018. It projects the number of vehicles to rise to 45,000 a day in 2023 and 83,000 by 2028. "The Supreme Court put an end to the toll collection at Gurgaon and Noida toll plazas citing such projections and huge profits they make by fixing the duration without any logic," he said. "I have asked works minister G. Sudhakaran to take up the matter with the Union government for bringing down the duration from 2028 so that the toll company gets only a reasonable profit."