Mumbai: In its second cabinet meeting in less than a week, the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government in Maharashtra Monday passed 19 decisions, including a toll waiver for light vehicles entering Mumbai ahead of the state assembly polls expected in November.
This meeting takes the total number of decisions passed by the Shinde cabinet since September to 165 in a span of six meetings.
The decision to waive the toll for light vehicles at five entry points of Mumbai is especially significant from a political perspective as it was a longstanding demand, backed by parties such as the undivided Shiv Sena, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) at various points. There have also been allegations by activists that the notification for this toll itself was flawed.
The Raj Thackeray-led MNS had led a shrill campaign for a toll-free Maharashtra from 2012 to 2014, with the then undivided Shiv Sena and the BJP, too, taking up the issue with the then government of the Congress and the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
“This is a historic decision. It is a masterstroke,” CM Shinde told reporters in Mumbai after the cabinet meeting.
“There has been a demand for toll waiver here for many years. Toll collection would lead to a lot of traffic congestion, too. As an MLA, I have also agitated for a toll waiver and had gone to court over it. This decision will benefit many people, including middle-class families; it will save time, fuel and reduce pollution,” he added.
Worli MLA Aaditya Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) in a post on social media platform X slammed the decision as a pre-election “jumla” (false promise).
“To have looted Maharashtra for two years and then to give a toll waiver hours before an election code of conduct clearly shows how desperate they are to try and sway us,” Thackeray wrote.
No amount of jumlas from the shinde- bjp regime can sway Maharashtra.
To have looted Maharashtra for 2 years and then to give a toll waiver hours before an election code of conduct, clearly shows how desperate they are to try and sway us, Maharashtra.
Their desperation to hide…
— Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) October 14, 2024
The Mahayuti government comprises the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the BJP and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
The contest for Mumbai is especially crucial for the Mahayuti this time as the rival Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, especially the Shiv Sena (UBT), had dominated the city during the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year.
The Shiv Sena (UBT) had won three seats and the Congress one, while the BJP and the Shinde-led Shiv Sena got one each. The Shinde-led Shiv Sena won its sole seat, Mumbai North West, by a razor-thin margin of just 48 votes.
Other than the Shiv Sena (UBT), the MVA includes the Congress and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar).
In the Lok Sabha elections, the MNS had given support to the Mahayuti without contesting any seat. This time, the MNS has decided to fight the assembly elections solo, a move that could hurt both the Shiv Senas as the party cuts into some of the Marathi-speaking votes.
The MNS Monday took credit for the state government’s decision to waive the toll for light vehicles entering Mumbai, with party workers distributing laddus to motorists at these toll booths.
In a statement, party chief Raj Thackeray congratulated the government, saying: “It is a good thing that at least Mumbaikars have been freed from the toll and our agitation has found some success. But the government needs to assure people that this is not a decision taken only for elections.”
Other than the toll waiver, Monday’s cabinet meeting also cleared a corporation for the welfare of the Agri community, allocated government land in Shinde’s home turf of Thane to the Thane civic body for an administrative building, and approved certain works pertaining to the second phase of the Pune Metro rail project.
The cabinet also approved a plan of the state Marathi language department to launch a publicity campaign for the language on the back of the Centre’s decision to accord classical language status to Marathi, and named a skill development university after the late industrialist Ratan Tata, among other decisions.
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Mumbai toll collection
The decision to waive the toll at Mumbai’s five entry points for light vehicles will come into effect from midnight on 14 October.
The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), a state government agency in charge of creating road infrastructure, was given the rights to collect the toll at Vashi, Thane naka, Dahisar, Mulund and Airoli, to compensate the agency for building 55 flyovers in Mumbai between 1995 and 1998.
The MSRDC had spent Rs 1,065.25 crore on the flyovers.
The MSRDC securitised toll collection, awarding the contract to private firm Mumbai Entry Point Ltd (MEPL) in 2010. The MEPL paid Rs 2,100 crore upfront to the MSRDC to collect the toll at the five entry points till November 2026 and in return maintain 27 flyovers on the Sion-Panvel Highway, the Western Express Highway, the Eastern Express Highway, the Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg corridor and the Airoli Bridge corridor.
Activists and politicians resisted toll collection at Mumbai’s entry points and even protested on the streets every time there was a scheduled increase in rates, mainly because the condition of the city’s roads largely remained poor despite the toll collection.
The exercise also holds up traffic entering and exiting Mumbai and causes massive jams. Moreover, there were allegations of the private company making a windfall with the toll contract.
According to a statement by the MSRDC published in December 2023, the total toll collected at Mumbai’s five entry points was Rs 3,172.43 crore, including the securitisation amount of Rs 2,100 crore.
Pravin Wategaonkar, an activist who has been taking up toll-related issues inside and outside courts, told ThePrint that the 2002 toll notification for Mumbai entry points was itself “bad in law”. He had also written to then Maharashtra chief secretary Nitin Kareer about this in June this year.
The letter, a copy of which ThePrint has seen, talks about how Wategaonkar found out under the Right to Information Act that there was no “build, operate and transfer” agreement executed between the Maharashtra government and the MSRDC to allot the latter any toll rights.
“Further, declaration of the total capital outlay is a condition precedent to determine the rate and period of toll collection… there was no disclosure of total capital outlay before issuance of the toll notification dated 27.09.2002. The ongoing toll levy and collection is therefore arbitrary, malafide and illegal,” he added.
A report of the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) had in 2016 also rapped the state government over the toll contract, saying the MSRDC had already recovered the cost of constructing the flyovers, assuming an internal rate of return of 16.12 percent, by 2010—the year it decided to securitise toll collection.
Toll politics
The concept of “build, operate and transfer” contracts came into place in infrastructure projects in Maharashtra during the rule of the undivided Shiv Sena and the BJP in the 1990s.
In 2012, the MNS launched a massive campaign against the toll across Maharashtra, with its workers vandalising toll booths and urging people not to pay the toll. The MNS kept this agenda alive over the years, with its leaders raising their voice over the issue every few years.
With the Congress-NCP government being in power at the time, the undivided Shiv Sena and the BJP, too, promised a toll-free Maharashtra if voted to power.
The political pressure prompted the then Congress-NCP government to close certain toll booths and mandate more transparency in toll collection and its disclosure. The state government then made it compulsory for all toll contractors to display collection details at booths and monitor traffic flows with digital meters. The government further made it compulsory for all toll contracts to be e-tendered, and ensured that there should be at least a 45-kilometre distance between two toll booths.
When the government of the BJP and the Shiv Sena came to power under Devendra Fadnavis as CM, it further reviewed Maharashtra’s toll policy and closed a few toll booths. Fadnavis had, however, said that a toll-free Maharashtra was a concept that the government planned to work towards and not a poll promise.
Ahead of the 2019 state polls, Ajit Pawar, who was then with the undivided NCP and a political rival of the BJP and the undivided Shiv Sena, questioned the Fadnavis government on what happened about its promise of making Maharashtra toll-free.
In August 2023, Aaditya Thackeray renewed the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s demand for scrapping the toll at Mumbai’s five entry points, alleging that commuters were being “unfairly charged twice”.
He said the Maharashtra government had transferred the maintenance of the Western Express Highway and the Eastern Express Highway to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, but the MSRDC was still collecting the toll from the entry point toll booths set up on these roads.
The state government will now have to compensate the MSRDC, which, in turn, will have to compensate the contractor (MEPL) for the duration for which toll has been waived off for light vehicles, that is, from now to November 2026. However, the state government has not clarified what the total compensation amount is likely to be.
A statement from the Maharashtra government said that it has formed a committee under the chief secretary to determine this amount.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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