RAHA, July 10 - The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI ) is all set to open its new toll plaza on NH 37 at Rontholi at Raha on July 12 to facilitate toll collection and manage traffic volume. The district administration has deployed heavy police force at the toll plaza to prevent any untoward incident in view of the opening day�s function.
The Raha toll plaza consists of four lanes dedicated to the Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system and apart from that two free lanes will be there on either side for the local vehicles, Alok Kumar, Project Director (PD), NHAI told this correspondent.
The total cost of the project is Rs 1036.12 crore. The tollable length of Raha toll plaza is 57.132 km. There will be different toll rates at the toll gate for different vehicles. It is learnt that the local two wheelers and three wheeler vehicles will be exempted from the toll fee.
The Inderdeep Constructions which has been handed over charge of Raha toll plaza on contractual basis will have to pay a daily sum of Rs 10.59 lakh to NHAI, according to information received from NHAI sources.
Meanwhile, 12 organisations of Raha including ATSU, AASU, AJYCP, KMSS have strongly opposed the initiative of the State government, the district administration and NHAI�s to reopen the Raha toll gate on NH-37 on Thursday. The organisations in a meeting held on Tuesday have alleged that NHAI without completing more than 40 per cent work of the four-lane highway at Raha took the decision to reopen the Raha toll plaza which is not justified. The organisations urged the government to complete the work first and then open the toll gate at Raha. The activists of the 12 organisations will also hold a strong protest demonstration at the toll plaza in view of the government�s move.
It must be mentioned that the Raha toll gate, one of the major toll gates in the state, was earlier closed down following intensive protests by the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) in 2015.
