NEW DELHI: The wait for new electric vehicle policy is set to get longer as the draft of the latest policy is yet not ready. Officials said that in the absence of the new policy, the city government is likely to further extend the existing one with only a few days left for its deadline, third time from its original date of expiry. “Work is still going on in many important aspects of the policy. Even if we notify it somehow, the implementation will take some time,” a senior official said.
The deadline for extension given to the old policy is going to end on December 31. “In such a situation, preparations have been started to extend the old policy again so that we don’t lose the gains we made to create a positive environment for the rising sales of electric vehicles,” he added.
Officials said that the benefits which people get while purchasing EVs will end with the expiry of the policy which would negatively impact the environment created for the promotion of EV economy. “EVs are costly and that is why the government incentivizes their purchase through rebates and subsidies. For this reason, people showed great interest in purchasing electric vehicles. The result of this is that in the first half of the current financial year, an increase of 20 per cent was seen in the EV sales,”Sources said that a cabinet note will soon be presented to the government to extend the old policy again. According to sources, the EV policy can be extended for 3 to 6 months while this duration will be used to finalize and bring the new policy.
It would be the third extension to the policy which originally expired in August this year. The Delhi EV Policy, which was initially launched in August 2020, expired on August 7. This led to a brief period where the registration of all categories of electric vehicles in the Capital was temporarily halted for two days, prompting the government to extend the policy’s provisions until further notice. It was again extended on October 23 till December 31.
While extending the old policy earlier, Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot had stated that Delhi EV policy 2.0 is in final stages and will be notified “soon” after necessary approvals. The work on the new policy has been going on for a long time and the city government had expected the new policy to be ready by the time the old policy expires. However, things changes after the L-G ordered removal of all fellows and researchers, sources said. Those who were involved in the project had to leave after the L-G’s instructions. It delayed the time frame to complete the work, they added.
Timeline of EV policy implementation
Policy came into effect first in August 2020 for 3 years. Share of EVs in vehicles sales rises to nearly 20% First extension to the policy given on August 7 Policy extended for second time on October 23 EV Policy 2.0 is expected to incentivise retrofitting vehicles running on conventional fuels to electric mode
