Pleas in High Court, Chandigarh Administration reconsiders EV policy

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, November 16

Nearly eight months after Chandigarh’s Electric Vehicle Policy came under the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s scanner, a Division Bench was told that the UT Administration was reconsidering the policy under challenge.

As a bunch of petitions on the issue came up for a resumed hearing before a Division Bench, applications were filed seeking withdrawal of the same on the ground that the respondent-administration was reconsidering the policy under challenge.

“Keeping in view the above, since the Administration is reconsidering the policy under challenge, we are of the considered opinion that viable grounds are made out to allow the applications. Accordingly, applications are allowed…,” the Bench of Justice GS Sandhawalia and Justice Lapita Banerji observed in two of the matters. The petitioners were represented, among others, by senior advocates Rajiv Atma Ram, Chetan Mittal and Amit Jhanji. The matter was brought to the High Court’s notice after Pradeep Sisodia and other petitioners filed a writ petition against the Administration and other respondents. The counsel for the petitioners contended their grievance was that they wished to buy an internal combustion engine two-wheeler. But there was no registration of non-electric two-wheelers under a policy issued by the Administration.

In another petition, the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association of India had submitted it was filing the plea challenging the Electric Vehicle Policy, 2022, introduced by the UT Administrator and being implemented through an impugned press note “setting mandatory limits and capping the sale and registration of the non-electric vehicles in the city”.

Describing it as illegal, the petitioner had also submitted it was arbitrary and violative of the Constitution. The petitioner also submitted that the action was in “abhorrence of statutory provisions of law, especially the provisions of The Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and The Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1898”.