Lucknow: Besides bearing the repair and maintenance costs, infrastructure firm PNC Infratech will also have to pay compensation to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for the loss of toll revenue due to the suspension of user-fee collection on the Lucknow-Kanpur Expressway.Sources told TOI that Rs 42 lakh would be recovered daily from the company till normal vehicular movement is restored on the expressway.As cracks and damage are emerging at new locations with time, the exact timeline by when maintenance work would end cannot be estimated as of now, an official said.The authority had floated a contract in March to hire a private agency to collect user fee from vehicle owners who commute via the 63-km-long access-controlled speed corridor between Lucknow and Unnao, developed at a cost of Rs 4,200 crore.The authority was seeking an annual remittance of over Rs 271 crore through collection of toll tax and received responses from six private agencies.The rights to collect the toll were awarded to Sahakar Global Ltd, a company based in Andheri West in Mumbai, in April.Quoting the highest amount, the company agreed to pay about Rs 153.5 crore annually and bagged the contract to manage the four plazas through which toll was being collected till Aug 5, before suspension of toll collection was announced.An official from the authority said that after negotiations, once the final consideration value for the contract is agreed upon by the two sides, the amount collected through daily operations is remitted directly to the Consolidated Fund of India.“The volume of traffic does not matter to us. Whether five motor vehicles ply via the expressway in a day or the number increases to 50,000, NHAI would continue to get the amount that has been finalised between the two parties at the time of agreement,” the official said.In a clarification on Thursday, PNC Infratech said there would be no material impact on the company’s ability to continue with the existing or new projects.In its disclosure to Bombay Stock Exchange, the company also said that PNC Infra would share other financial implications once there was more clarity in the matter.
