Excess toll of Rs 10 collected; Court orders Rs 5000 as compensation

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: A consumer forum in Bengaluru has ordered the payment of Rs.5,000 compensation to a consumer from whom an excess of Rs.10 was deducted as toll payment.

The Bangalore Additional District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in its order on April 11, 2023 allowed the complaint and said, “Opposite Parties (Ops) are hereby directed to pay Rs.10, being excess amount debited from complainant account to the complainant from date of filing complaint till the date of realization within two months from the date of this order.”

The Commissioner also said, “Further, OPs are liable to pay compensation of Rs.5,000 to the complainant for having caused mental agony and deficiency in service to the complainant and cost of litigation of Rs.3,000 to the complainant within two months from the date of this order.”

The complainant was one Santosh Kumar MB a resident of Gandhinagar, Bengaluru. He filed the complaint against the National Highways Authority of India and the JAS Toll Road Company Limited, a Nagpur-based toll collection company. He filed the complaint on July 29, 2021.

He had travelled on the Highway on February 20, 2020 and May 16, 2020. He had crossed two toll plazas and therefore an amount of Rs.35 should have been deducted from his FastTag but instead Rs.40 was deducted from him on both days. His complaint to them did not elicit response so he filed a complaint with the Consumer Commission.

He claimed that huge sums of money is thus collected from commuters and since the amount was small and litigation coust would be much more, most people did not file the consumer complaint. The commission in its order said, “While FastTag ensures automatic toll charages, sometimes issues with the system and the process at the toll plaza result in the deducation of morethan applicable charges.

The dispute of wrong deduction at toll plazas arises due to delay in receiving transaction SMS. The consumer doesn’t expect perfections. All they expect is the responsible authority acknowledging their redress and correct the error in the reasonable form of time.” It said there was deficiency of service by the agency.

“The complainant has to run from pillar to post to rectify the mistake of excess toll collection. Ops have not shown any intention nor taken steps to redress the complaints. The vehicle users even share and shocking experiences while complainant has been rising a query about incor rect debts and charges. The OPs hardly works on the redressal and take the responsibility to the complaints by the