Gadkari Launches Second Barrier-Free MLFF Plaza in Delhi

The Centre's push to eliminate toll booth queues has taken another step forward, with Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday inaugurating a Multi-Lane Free Flow (MLFF) barrier-less tolling system at the Mundka-Bakkarwala Toll Plaza on Urban Extension Road-II (UER-II) in Delhi.

The Delhi plaza is only the second such installation in the country. The first opened on 1 May at the Choryasi Toll Plaza on the Surat-Bharuch section of National Highway 48 in Gujarat.

State-owned National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is now pressing ahead with a phased national rollout. In the first phase, 17 plazas across nine states, among them Gujarat, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Assam, are expected to go live by September 2026. A second, larger phase covering more than 108 additional plazas is scheduled for completion by March 2027.

The system does away with physical barriers and the need for vehicles to stop or even slow significantly. It uses Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras alongside existing FASTag accounts to deduct tolls as vehicles pass through at normal travelling speed. NHAI says the technology will cut waiting times and congestion at busy plazas, trim fuel consumption and shorten overall journey times for drivers.