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.



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EVEN BJP AND RSS PEOPLE EAT BEEF SECRETLY. I can name them
BJP and sangh parivar will not digest this truth and will protest. Hegde/Yoodiyoorappa may call for karnataka bandh.
Dear Swamiji, Thank you for your statement. But we knew it while going through Hindu scriptures. And as Abu Muhammad said, you are talking about the good person RAAM. But BJP is talking about vote bank RAM or could be about Computer RAM (Random Access Memory)
Seer. Dont say cultural imperialism. Instead of that use simple words. Such kind of terms brainless RSS people cant understand
I know one thing. Seer told one fact that is RSS and BJP trying to impose cultural imperialismin India
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Seerji, you are taking about Mahatma Gandhiji's MARYADA PURUSH RAM, but Sangh Parivar's political ARM of RAM is different, vote bank RAM, what is in the scsriptures is immaterial what Sangh says is eternal truth!!
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