It refers to Union Transport Minister rightly stressing on production of e-cars while hinting on a ban on cars with petrol and diesel engines. Union government should implement towards eco-friendly policy in phases with a total ban on production of diesel-cars by say January 1, 2018. Thereafter, only CNG-fitted petrol cars may be allowed to be manufactured.
With procurement-price of petrol and diesel being almost same, diesel is kept cheaper for keeping prices of travel in public-transport and transportation of goods cheaper. Allowing use of economical diesel for luxury cars is as such totally unjustified.
Central government should also adopt a taxation policy to encourage manufacture of small cars, because costly big cars use much more space for parking and roads. It can be done by having double rate of GST on cars with ex-factory price rupees 10 lakhs and above, rather than having different GST rates according to length or engine-capacity.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
