Why Maharashtra waived the toll on light vehicles at Mumbai entry points

Aiming to please the middle class, the Mahayuti government in Maharashtra led by Eknath Shinde has waived the toll on light vehicles such as cars, school buses, state transport buses at the five entry points to Mumbai. Until the midnight of October 14, when the waiver came into effect, motorists had to pay Rs 45 while entering or leaving Mumbai on a car, for example, at the Mulund, Vashi, Dahisar, Airoli and LBS Marg checkpoints. The move brings relief to a significant segment of people who will also benefit from the time saved and cleaner air due to less traffic jams and pollution at these points.
“Of an estimated 350,000 vehicles that enter and leave Mumbai at these checkpoints, 70,000 are heavy vehicles and 280,000 are light vehicles,” said Dada Bhuse, minister for public works (public undertakings). The Mahayuti cabinet’s decision was made in what was likely its last meeting before the code of conduct for the Assembly election, due in mid-November, kicks in this week. A committee under chief secretary Sujata Saunik will decide on the compensation to be paid to the Maharashtra State Roads Development Corporation (MSRDC).
“This is a historic decision and a masterstroke,” CM Shinde claimed, while refuting Opposition charges that the announcement was made with an eye on the election. Pointing out that the waiver will help save time and fuel, besides reducing pollution, he said this was part of the state government’s welfare thrust that also includes schemes like the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, which provides monthly financial assistance of Rs 1,500 to women in the 21-60 age group.
Alleging that “just like Ladki bahin came at the back of a defeat”, the toll waiver, too, “comes at the back of an impending defeat”, Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) tweeted on social media platform X that the “desperate measure just hours before election code of conduct shows that Mahajhoothi government knows their days are numbered so try and salvage whatever little they can to save themselves from the public’s wrath”. The tweet went on to mention “absolute and total collapse” of law and order.
Road charges had last seen the political limelight around a decade ago when the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) led by Raj Thackeray launched a campaign seeking transparency in toll collections and MNS workers attacked toll checkpoints across the state. In the 2009 Assembly polls, the first faced by the MNS floated by Thackeray in 2006—a year after splitting from the Shiv Sena—13 of its candidates became legislators. In 2012, aided by Right to Information activist Sanjay Shirodkar, Thackeray alleged massive corruption in toll agreements, which he claimed were skewed in favour of the contractors.
Thackeray alleged that toll contractors continued to collect toll even after recovering the cost of construction and projected returns on their investment, and even fudged traffic numbers to maximise their profits—vehicle numbers were allegedly under-reported in traffic surveys, and project costs inflated, while toll operators pocketed money claiming they had allowed a certain number of ‘unpaid’ and ‘exempted’ vehicles, including those of VIPs, to pass.
Thackeray ordered MNS workers to launch a round-the-clock, fortnight-long survey at 40 major checkpoints to record the number of vehicles paying toll and verify if there were any deviations in claims about traffic made by contractors. The survey struck a chord with several motorists, including non-Maharashtrians even though the MNS had in 2008 launched an agitation against Hindi-speaking migrants in Maharashtra, boosting the morale of the nearly 10,000 MNS workers who were on the vigil.
Later, Thackeray made a sensational claim that the five entry points to Mumbai, which had been securitised for Rs 2,100 crore in 2008, saw daily collections of a massive Rs 1.37 crore. Even when the figure was rounded off to Rs 1.25 crore, this meant yearly collections of Rs 456.25 crore. Similarly, he claimed their survey had revealed that collections at the Khalapur checkpoint on the Mumbai–Pune expressway were around Rs 1.75 crore daily or Rs 638.75 crore annually and those at the old highway (NH-4) were Rs 45 lakh daily or Rs 164.25 crore annually. Put together, this worked out to an annual Rs 803 crore. In 2004, the toll operator had paid the state government Rs 1,301 crore for a 15-year concession period for the two roads.
Thackeray also called on people to stop paying toll till the state government ensured transparency in the system and announced MNS workers would also keep a vigil to ensure people were not pressured to pay up. The agitation, however, gradually fizzled out. In 2014, Thackeray tried to revive the protest by courting arrest, but by then the campaign had lost steam.
This led to a perception that the MNS had raised the issue, which was hitherto untouched by other mainstream parties, but had failed to take it to the logical end. In a sharp fall in its fortunes, the MNS could bag just one Assembly seat in 2014 and none in 2019. Former MNS men admit it was not easy to break the nexus considering that politicians of all shades, bureaucrats and contractors had their hands in the till. The party nonetheless managed to bring the issue into mainstream discourse. An anti-toll agitation by the people of Kolhapur, too, led to the state government scrapping the collection contract.
During the 2014 Assembly election campaign, Devendra Fadnavis, who was the BJP state unit chief, and senior BJP leader late Gopinath Munde promised toll exemptions and a “toll-free Maharashtra”. The Fadnavis-led BJP-Shiv Sena government decided to stop collection of toll levies at 11 of 38 toll projects with the state public works department (PWD) and one of the 53 projects with the MSRDC. Of the remaining 26 toll checkpoints with the PWD and 26 with the MSRDC, toll collections on cars, jeeps and Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) buses were waived. The two decisions came into effect from the midnight of May 31, 2015, but the waiver for light vehicles at the five entry points to Mumbai had been put off due to financial considerations. Unlike most other toll projects where there are more heavy vehicles than light vehicles, the situation is the opposite in Mumbai.
In 2023, Thackeray managed to extract a series of concessions for motorists and commuters from the Shinde-led coalition government. This included provision of infrastructure like toilets, ambulances and cranes, lighting, and allowing residents in localities around the toll plazas to avail of monthly passes. Thackeray also alleged that toll was “the biggest scam in Maharashtra”. Now, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the MNS have jumped in to claim credit for the latest decision.
Maharashtra turned to the public-private partnership (PPP) model for road construction in the 1990s. The first toll road in the state was the Jaisingpur bypass between Kolhapur and Sangli. This had followed the development of the first tolled road in India—the 12-km stretch from Indore to Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh, which was opened to traffic in November 1993. The Maharashtra government gradually adopted this PPP model for signature linear projects like the Mumbai–Pune expressway. In 1995, the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition came to power in Maharashtra, and then PWD minister Nitin Gadkari launched the construction of 55 flyovers to ease the traffic woes of the city. Toll charges were levied since 2002 to recover the costs of this project and to provide for the upkeep of the flyovers and roads.
However, commuters complained that though private contractors collected toll to recover the costs of construction and maintenance, the quality of services left much to be desired. The roads also lacked adequate facilities like breakdown assistance, toilets, service roads and ambulances.
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