Soon, buses, taxis on clean fuels won’t need permits to ply

NEW DELHI: Soon commercial vehicles that run on alternative non-polluting fuel including electricity, 100% ethanol and methanol like taxis, auto-rickshaws or buses won’t need to get permits. The policy is set to be announced with the aim to reduce the operating cost of such vehicles and to allow more of them for transporting passengers, which is at present very restrictive in nature.
“We are seriously considering how to end the ‘permit raj’ in the field of alternative fuels and electric mobility,” Union road transport minister Nitin Gadkari said while addressing a conference of automobile component manufacturers.
Sources said ending permit system for these vehicles will also put a check on corruption at RTO level and will increase the availability of intermediary transport.
“The state and city administrations often put restriction on the numbers of commercial vehicles that can ply and so you have a situation where people end up buying permits paying high charge. Delhi’s auto-rickshaws is one such example where the price paid for getting the permit is higher than the vehicle cost,” said an official, who did not wish to be named.
The Central Motor Vehicles Act empowers both the Centre and state governments to exempt any category of commercial vehicles from obtaining a permit. However, to ensure that these vehicles follow all other mandatory norms they will have to be registered as “commercial” ones and will have to have the insurance cover.
According to different studies, each taxi or auto-rickshaw replaces seven to eight private vehicles on the road and these don’t require permanent place for parking.
However, the only concern remains for large scale roll out of electric vehicles and those on alternate fuel is how the government makes the fuel and enough charging stations available across the country.