As the government bodies gradually acquired electric vehicles for their official use, following a mandate by the Finance Ministry, there is one ministry you would expect to be the front-runner in this transition - the Environment Ministry. After all, the use of electric vehicles is being pushed because of their environmental advantages in the first place. However, rather than leading the transition, the ministry has acquired electric cars this Tuesday, as announced by the ministry in a recent tweet.?
Ministry sources have confirmed that the ministry has acquired five electric cars on a trial basis. Out of the five, three electric cars have been assigned to the ministry officials for their official duty. For charging these electric cars, the ministry has also installed charging stations within its premises.?
A tweet was sent out by the official Twitter handle of the ministry, stating - ¡°@moefcc acquires Electric Cars for official duty thereby utilising in-house charging facilities and setting an example in pollution free commutes.¡± The tweet also displayed the electric cars - Mahindra eVeritos, attached to a charging point within the ministry campus.?
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As per sources cited by PTI, the three electric vehicles allotted to the officials have been specifically assigned to the officials in the ranks of joint secretary, inspector general and director general.?
The move comes as the government makes efforts to bring in an era of electric vehicles in the country. For this, the government will give priority to EVs over IC engine vehicles across all of its departments. In addition, it has provided a total of Rs 2,500 crore towards deploying 5000 electric buses across the country. Subsidies on electric vehicles for both the makers and the buyers, subsidies on EV charging infrastructure and several similar incentives have also been provided under the government¡¯s FAME-II scheme. The government recently announced that it also planning to levy no road tax on electric vehicles, hoping to bring their cost down even further.?
In the wake of such an aggressive push towards an increased EV adoption in the country, it is a surprise that the Environment Ministry itself missed on these EVs for such a long time. Now that it has these, we can only hope that the Ministry will be quicker to adapt other such environmentally friendly measures for the greater good!?