ECC refund final hurdle in MCD toll, FASTag merger

BESIDES TOLL, MCD ALSO COLLECTS ECC, WHICH IS REFUNDED TO TRUCKS CARRYING ESSENTIALS, BUT FASTAG DOES NOT HAVE PROVISION FOR REFUND

- Paras Singh

NEW DELHI: With the formation of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)'s standing committee, a long-pending plan to integrate the civic body's toll tax system with the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI)'s FASTag platform may finally move past the administrative delays that have held it up for two years. But officials say the project still faces one major hurdle—handling refunds of the environment compensation charge (ECC) collected at the Capital's borders.

The integration project, first proposed as a pilot at the Kundli border, is designed to unify toll systems and reduce the need for vehicles to carry separate RFID tags or cards. Both MCD's toll tax and FASTag use similar radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. But the challenge lies in ECC—a pollution mitigation fee levied in addition to toll.