The result: taxi drivers are free to charge passengers any amount they like. As Shreya Jaitley, a resident of Kalkaji in south Delhi, narrates how she was duped into paying Rs 45 extra for her trip home from the international airport. “As soon as we drove out of the airport, the driver told me I will have to pay an additional Rs 45 as toll tax for the Gurgaon Expressway. The money was meant for the tax he would pay for the round trip to Kalkaji,” Jaitley said. And an unsuspecting Jaitley ended up paying the money.

According to the traffic police, however, Jaitley was supposed to pay only Rs 11 — charged for use of the expressway at the IGI toll plaza — the amount the taxi driver will have to pay at the counter.

A traffic official manning the pre-paid counter at the international terminal confirmed that neither has the toll been fed into the computers at the counter, nor do officials write it down on pre-paid receipts handed out to passengers. Traffic officials do not even inform passengers informally about the toll tax, which means they are entirely at the mercy of taxi drivers.

The taxi drivers, on the other hand, are also hassled by the failure to add up the toll tax. “Many passengers refuse to pay for the toll, saying they have paid the entire amount at the counter itself,” said Tejpal Sehrawat, president of the Delhi Airport Taxi Union. The union has also written to the traffic police on several occasions to complain about the situation.