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.
Stretches identified
The government has identified the stretches connecting the capital Raipur to major cities like Bilaspur, Rajnandgaon and Jagdalpur as the priority stretches where a whole network of charging stations are proposed to take a deterrent like battery discharge out of the equation.
Thursday’s announcement makes Chhattisgarh the 21st State in the country that has announced its EV policy and the State aims to have 15% of new registrations of vehicles, either under individual use or commercial use as EVs till 2027.
The new policy also paves the way for the registration of three -wheelers and four-wheelers retrofitted with an electric motor and an electric powertrain using advanced battery technologies and certified by a government recognised/ approved agency. An unorganised industry in the State has been doing these conversions into EVs or hybrid models for a while but the new policy will allow such vehicles to be registered as EVs and get added incentives, some of those concessions on the line of new EVs.
Other highlights of the policy include setting up of skill centres with provision for training related to jobs in the EV ecosystem, reimbursing full State GST and the registration fees on the sale of electric buses and electric goods. The government will also allocate 500-1,000 acres of land for developing EV Parks with plug and play internal infrastructure, common facilities and necessary external infrastructure.
