Roll back toll taxes: Prashanth Reddy

Hyderabad: Roads and Buildings Minister V Prashanth Reddy on Wednesday demanded the rollback of the decision to increase toll taxes at National Highways proposed by the Centre.

The Minister wrote an open letter to the Union Minister Nitin Gadkari opposing increasing the toll tax in Telangana. There are 32 toll gates in Telangana through which the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) collects toll tax. He said the toll tax the Centre was already collecting had become a heavy burden on the people of Telangana. If the toll tax rates are increased again, it will be like 'falling a palm fruit on a barking fox.' He said that while the Centre had sanctioned Rs 1,25,176 Crores for 113 National Highway projects and CRIF works in Telangana state since 2014, it had spent only Rs 20,350 crore only in the last nine years.

In the year 2014, Rs 600 crores of toll tax was collected in the entire State of Telangana. It means that the toll tax collection has increased by 300 percent during these nine years. This increase has led to the prices of essential goods supplied by trucks. Common bus fares have increased. This has made the life of middle-class people very burdensome.

Prashanth Reddy said that the Union Minister G Kishan Reddy, the only Union Minister from Telangana, and many BJP leaders were often making misleading statements that the Centre has spent lakhs of crores on national highways. If the approvals for national highways in Telangana State are like a mountain on paper, the expenditure is very small, he said. However, the National Highways Corporation has collected Rs 9000 crores of toll in the State of Telangana through toll tax in the last nine years. It means that half of the money spent by the central government has already been collected from the people of Telangana through toll tax. Apart from that, how many crores has the Centre collected from the people of Telangana State in these nine years by increasing the prices of petrol and diesel and in the name of additional road cesses on petrol and diesel? It is necessary for the Centre to account to the people of Telangana State where that money is going.