Mangaluru, Jan 1: Led by two local MLAs belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party, dozens of people today forcibly stopped toll fee collection at Talapady toll gate on the outskirts of the city allowing vehicles plying between Karnataka and Kerala on the national highway 66 to travel without paying any fee for some time.
Mangaluru City South MLA D Vedavyasa Kamath and Mangaluru City North MLA Y Bharat Shetty, who led the workers, said that the Navayuga Udupi Tollway Pvt. Ltd. (NUTPL), the concessionaire of the about 90-km-long highway widening project between Talapady and Kundapura in Karnataka, had failed to complete the project since over a decade.
The service roads and two flyovers under the project remained uncompleted. Hence motorists were facing a hardship. Notwithstanding Nalin Kumar Kateel, Dakshina Kannada MP, arranging ₹56 crore loan to the NUTPL through Axis Bank to complete the prominent Pumpwell flyover in the city, the company had failed to complete it.
The MLAs said that they stopped the toll collection as a symbolic protest to bring pressure on the company to complete the project within this month.
The BJP workers who gathered near the toll gate around 7.30 a.m. forcibly removed the barricades and made the vehicles ply without paying the fee. The workers of the company managing the toll booth did not resist.
The BJP workers said that vehicles would ply without paying toll till about 6 p.m. If the company resumed the collection during the day on Wednesday, the party workers would again forcibly stop it on Thursday, they said.
Shivaprasad Rai, in-charge of toll collection of the company at Talapady, Hejmady and Sasthana on the same highway told The Hindu that the NUTPL collected about ₹7 lakh as toll fee daily at Talapady from over 12,000 vehicles. The loss on Wednesday could be about ₹4 lakh.
The project is being implemented under build, operate and transfer basis.



Comments
Media is giving half report. As this issue relates to bjp, hired media is not giving true figure of explosives + ammunitions seized. There is a report that scores of weapons and bags full of explosives are seized but media is showing only 10 percent of it. Even the inspectors are hiding the figure. However, we common man wants to know the fact. We want to know reason why bjp offices are turned into godown of ammunitiions, explosives, evm machines, ballot papers, voter id cards, adhaar cards etc etc. Why investigating agencies are shut their mouth.
If this news is true then why he not called terrorist.
What type of award central govt will give. For such offenders and to their god fathers a strict punishment must given. Don't spare , for pocessing arms and amuntion remember Sunjay Dut case. All must deported from Maharashtra to Andaman for ever.
Real face of BJP/RSS party
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