Toll collection on India's national highways has moved from manual cash counters to barrier-free electronic systems. FASTag is the platform that made this possible: a Radio Frequency Identification tag fixed to the windscreen and linked to a prepaid or savings account, from which the toll is deducted automatically as the vehicle passes a reader-equipped lane. FASTag became mandatory for most four-wheelers at national highway toll plazas in 2021. The local pass sits on top of that system and solves a specific problem: people who live beside a toll plaza and cross it several times a day were paying trip-by-trip, and the concessional local pass they were entitled to required a physical visit with documents. Making that pass digital removes the counter altogether.

Local residents are the group with the strongest grievance against highway tolling, because a plaza built for long-distance traffic often ends up sitting between a village and its nearest town. The concessional local pass has existed for years; what changed on 18 August is that obtaining it no longer requires standing at the plaza. The broader point for exams is the architecture: this is an example of government digital public infrastructure being reused rather than rebuilt, with DigiLocker supplying identity documents, VAHAN supplying vehicle records and GIS supplying the geographic test. NHAI has said the rollout will continue in phases to more plazas.