File Photo of Madras High Court
The Madras High Court today directed National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to shift a toll plaza at Kappalur on NH-7 in the district so as to allow public using a small stretch of the highway pay less toll.
Passing orders on a PIL, a bench here comprising justices V Ramasubramanian and V M Velumani held that the present location of the toll plaza did not satisfy the mandatory proviso of the National Highway Act and ordered NHAI to shift the plaza to a place near interjection of NH-7 (Varanasi-Kanyakumari) and NH-205 (Madurai-Kollam) within four weeks.
This was required so that there was no violation of the National Highway Act provisions and to ensure that persons who used small section of the NH-7 for the purpose of proceeding to NH-208 were not charged the same rate of toll fee as charged for those travelling by NH-7.
Until the shifting, toll should not be collected from those who used the NH-7 to go to NH-208. Later they could resort to collecting toll only for the short distance used by those going to NH-208.
The judge made it clear that there was no impediment for collecting toll for those using NH-7.