Registration of 15-year-old govt vehicles to be cancelled: Himachal Deputy CM

Shimla: Registration of government vehicles completing 15 years would be cancelled and these vehicles would be scrapped, Himachal Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri, who also holds the transport portfolio, said on Saturday.

Addressing the reporters here on Saturday, Agnihotri said that six scrapping centres would be established in the state and expressions of interest have been invited for setting up these centres under the scrapping policy. These vehicles would be replaced with electric vehicles.

Terming it as a "year of reforms" in the transport department, the deputy chief minister said the fitness certificates of private vehicles would be issued through automatic testing stations. Earlier, it was done manually.

Informing that 50 per cent of the total accidents take place on national highways and human error is responsible for the majority of the road accidents, he said that directions have been issued for the identification of accident-prone stretches (black spots) to take remedial steps with the help of the Public Works Department and district administrations.

A deadline has been set to install an intelligent traffic management system and CCTVs at all 12 transport barriers in the state by June 30 this year.

There are 22,43,524 vehicles in the state, including 19,25,593 private and 3,17,931 commercial vehicles. At present, there are 2,811 electric vehicles in the state, majority of which are two-wheelers. Out of these, 2,412 are private vehicles and 399 are commercial vehicles, he informed.

As many as 1,221 applications have been received for 500 e-taxis to be given to the youth and seven electric charging stations have been set up on Chandigarh to Keylong road. By February-end, 17 more such stations would become functional, he added.

The Indian Oil Corporation and others have shown interest in setting up e-charging stations at 36 locations and 55 locations for establishing e-charging stations have been identified by the government where wayside amenities would also be available.

The department earned a revenue of Rs 11 crore by allotting 3,155 fancy numbers. Number one, which was earlier allotted to government vehicles, has now also been thrown open to the general public at a minimum bid of Rs 5 lakh, he said.

Applications were invited to run buses on 234 routes and 1,236 applications were received. However, there were no takers for 50 routes and these routes would be advertised again, Agnihotri.