Government Plans New FASTag Category For Special Vehicles: Report

The Central government is planning to develop a new FASTag category tailored for toll-exempt vehicles. This comes as part of its nationwide rollout of Multi-Lane Free Flow (MLFF) tolling, according to a Hindustan Times report. The move aims to eliminate technical glitches faced by defence, police, and other government vehicles during the shift to fully automated, barrier-free toll collection.

Under the current MLFF system, tolls are collected via AI, satellite based tracking, and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR). It allows vehicles to pass through toll corridors at high speed without stopping. While this works well for ordinary passenger cars and commercial vehicles, it can create issues for exempted vehicles used by the armed forces, paramilitary, and police. If such vehicles are not correctly registered or recognised, they may be wrongly charged toll or receive e-challans.

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The proposed solution involves a dedicated FASTag category for exempt vehicles. Reports suggest that specially configured FASTags would allow authorised users, including defence and select government agencies, to move through MLFF lanes without any toll deduction or violation notice.

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For official military vehicles, the system may not even require a FASTag; instead, it could recognise special defence number plates and instantly remove their movement data to safeguard security.

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A dual-pronged approach is being evaluated. One option is to share details of privately owned vehicles used for official duties with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), or to issue them "special" FASTags with unlimited free movement.

Another alternative under consideration is to let these vehicles use regular FASTags, with tolls deducted upfront and later reimbursed by the relevant departments. As per reports, pilot projects have already integrated defence, police, and paramilitary vehicle databases with toll systems, ensuring smooth passage at automated checkpoints.