In a landmark judgment the Supreme Court has held that no toll will be charged from commuters to cross the Delhi-Noida Direct (DND) flyover.
The High Court made this ruling following a recent dismissal of the Noida Toll Bridge Corporation Limited (NTBCL) appeal of an Allahabad High Court judgement of June 2016.
This Supreme Court bench of Surya Kant observed that the Noida Authority had no legal right to sublet the toll collection to NTBCL as it claimed so since it has already got the project expense recovered.
The bench also pointed out that instead of functioning within its limits, the Noida Authority had provided the NTBCL the authority to collect toll fees. But it also said that this delegation has resulted in “unjust enrichment of the company at the expense of the public.”
The Union Ministry of highways had passed this ruling in anticipation of the Allahabad High Court order to NTBCL not to charge tolls over the 9.2 km DND flyover over the Yamuna river.
The Allahabad High Court had in its 2016 judgment quashed the concessionaire agreement between the Noida Authority and NTBCL which had provided for collection of toll from the vehicles plying on the flyway.
This decision was reached courtesy of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the Federation of Noida Resident Welfare Association which petitioned for the toll saying that it was exploitive of the public.
Thus, those hundreds of thousands of citizens who were using the DND flyway received the long-awaited reverse after the Supreme Court adjourned this high-profile debate about toll collection.
The decision also supports the argument that executive and legislative agencies are powerless to delegate authority to such an extent that private individuals reap huge financial rewards while the public suffers.
This has created great concern as the civil society and other stakeholders are anxious with issues of balance of power in relations between the public authorities and private concessionaires in areas of infrastructure development affecting the lives of millions of people.
This decision may influence other toll collection related contractual provisions throughout the country, and therefore create future legal precedent.
The decision has been made at a time when the society has turned against toll collections with people asking about the fairness of some of these arrangements.
Public and private sectors undertaking infrastructure projects with PPP are expected to face more scrutiny following this judgment. It questions how the Noida Authority will change its methodology to handle such sort of projects in the future in the light of such a verdict given by the Supreme Court of India.
For now at least, those using the DND flyway can now travel without the additional and highly perceptive toll charges as a major shift in the debate on public infrastructure and management and control by private companies.
The ruling is also a victory for Noida and Delhi residents and commuters who were on one of the busiest and most congested pathways connecting the two cities suffering from the toll collection system.
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