The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Delhi-Noida-Direct (DND) flyway will be toll-free as it dismissed a private firm’s plea challenging the Allahabad High Court’s 2016 order to stop charging toll from passengers.
This decision will benefit millions of people who commute on the flyway daily.
A bench of Justices Suryakant and Ujwal Bhuyan held that awarding the contract to private firm Noida Toll Bridge Company Limited (NTBCL) to collect toll from commuters plying on the DND flyway was unjust, unfair and arbitrary.
“There is no reason to continue collecting or tolling the user. We hold that the agreement (for toll collection) is illegal,” the bench said.
It pulled up the Noida authority for delegating toll collection to private firm NTBCL, which has no prior experience and said it resulted in unjust enrichment.
The bench said that Noida had encroached on its authority by delegating the right to collect or levy charges to NTBCL and it had fleeced the common man with hundreds of crores of rupees.
The High Court had in October 2016 ruled that no toll would be levied from now on by those using the 9.2-km-long, eight-lane Delhi-Noida direct flyway. The order was passed after the High Court allowed the Public Interest Litigation of the Federation of Noida Residents Welfare Association.
A PIL filed in 2012 challenged the “levying and collection of tolls in the name of user charges by the Noida Toll Bridge Company”.
In a more than 100-page judgment, the High Court held, “The user charges being levied/received by the Concessionaire (Noida Toll Bridge Company), Infrastructure Tenant and Financial Services (Promoter and Developer of the Project) are not supported by the legal provisions relied upon and Noida Authority. It said that the “authority to collect and levy consumer charges from passengers given to the concessionaire under the concession agreement suffers from excessive delegation and is contrary to the provisions of the UP Industrial Development Act”.
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