Chhattisgarh government announces electric vehicle policy
The Hindu
Apart from offering various sops, focus is on creating a robust charging infrastructure
The Chhattisgarh Cabinet on Thursday approved its Electric Vehicle or EV policy. Apart from offering various incentives for new vehicles like other States, the thrust of the policy is on creating a robust charging infrastructure, ease conversion of existing vehicles into hybrid or electric model and incentivise manufacturing, said officials.
Shailabh Sahu, Assistant Transport Commissioner, the nodal officer for the policy drafting, said that at its core, the policy aimed at providing assurance to the prospective EV buyers that long-distance commute plans are not impacted due to fears of batteries running out of power.
A “route monopoly” was one of the ways that the Chhattisgarh government planned to address the problem, he added.
Explaining the term further, he said that earlier, people would be wary of setting up a standalone charging station fearing that once the business took off, other players would come in and the investor would not be able to reap the benefits of being an early mover.
“So, in our policy, a player can set up multiple charging stations along a single route in one go. For this, they may opt for private land or government land or a mix of both for the patches. No other players would be allowed to set up stations on the monopolised route even in future. There will also be swift single-window clearances for land allocation,” said Mr. Sahu.
According to him, the monopoly provision was introduced in the policy after discussions with other States which had announced their EV plans earlier as well as other stakeholders such as private players in the space. "They said future competition diminished prospects of return, thus making the business unprofitable. This came up as a reason why EVs didn't take off the way the States had anticipated," said Mr. Sahu.
This marking of the routes will be done in co-ordination with the Revenue department, Rural/urban department, local bodies, PWD and any other government authority on mutually agreed terms and conditions for establishing charging stations/ public bus transportation, the policy draft says.