A Bangalore man took the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to the city consumer court for illegal trade practices after he was charged an excess amount at a toll plaza.
Diving into details, Santhosh Kumar MB, a resident of Gandhinagar drove his vehicle twice on a national highway stretch in the Chitradurga limits back in 2020. However, an additional amount of Rs 5 was deducted from his FASTag account each time he crossed the toll plaza.
According to the 38-year old resident of Gandhinagar, Rs 35 should be deducted from his FASTag account for crossing the toll plaza but Rs 40 was deducted. This means he was charged Rs 10 extra in total.
Though Rs 10 may seem like a negligible amount, since lakhs of cars may cross the toll plaza over a month, the resulting additional deduction is nothing short of a major scam by responsible authorities.
As a responsible citizen, Santhosh Kumar approached the NHAI authorities in the city to rectify the issue. In fact, he even took his time to approach the project director, and project implementation unit of the agency, Chitradurga to point out this error.
However, concerned authorities did not even pay a penny’s worth of attention to this man’s efforts. Tired of running from desk to desk of authorities, Santhosh bid his faith on the Indian judiciary and dragged NHAI to the court.
He also sued NHAI project director in Chitradurga, and the manager of JAS Toll Road Company Ltd in Nagpur at the first additional district consumer disputes redressal. Furthermore, Kumar argued his case on his own in the court.
While JAS Toll Road Company Ltd representatives filed their version, it was only after the court-stipulated window of 45 days. However, an attorney of the NHAI project director of Chitradurga did appear in court.
This attorney argued that the toll fee was Rs 38 for cars, and as per a previously issued circular from NHAI, the collected fee has to be rounded off. Furthermore, the attorney requested the court to dismiss the case.
However, the court recently ordered the agency to refund the excess toll fee collected. On top of that, the court also asked the agency to pay a compensation of Rs 8,000 as well.
Thoughts: The whole sage would have ended if the NHAI project director of Chitradurga had responded to the complainant. The lack of response wasted the court’s precious time and we think action must also be taken against responsible authorities for wasting the court’s time and not responding to the complainant.
Furthermore, we believe that the compensation given to the complainant is too small for his efforts, and we expect the courts to be a little more rewarding in the future to encourage citizens.
