UT to stop diesel bus registration from mid-October for this fiscal

Dushyant Singh Pundir

Chandigarh, September 30

In order to promote green transportation, the UT Transport Department is likely to stop the registration of non-electric school, tourist and factory buses by the middle of next month.

As per the revised Electric Vehicle (EV) Policy announced in July, the quota of registering nearly 154 such buses for this financial year is likely to be exhausted by the middle of October. Nearly 142 buses have been registered so far and fresh registrations of new diesel-run buses would start again from April 1 next year, said sources in the State Transport Authority (STA), which registers all commercial vehicles in the city.

At present, there are nearly 3,500 diesel buses in the city, including 2,000 school buses, 1,000 tourist and factory buses, and around 500 Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU) buses. The Transport Department has planned to add 100 more electric buses to its existing fleet of 80 such vehicles this year.

The procurement of the buses will give a major boost to the plan of the administration to replace the entire fleet of nearly 350 CTU diesel buses, running on local or suburban routes, with electric ones by 2027-28.

As per the revised EV Policy, the administration will halt the registration of non-electric (petrol) two-wheelers in the city once the target fixed for 2023 is achieved, most likely in the first week of October.

According to the target, only 12,076 two-wheelers running on fossil fuel are to be registered in the city till December this year. After achieving the number, their registration will be stopped and only electric two-wheelers will be registered.

After backlash from stakeholders, the UT Administration had revised its EV Policy in the first week of July and reduced the registration target for electric two-wheelers. The target had been reduced to 35 per cent from the previous 70 per cent to be achieved in 2023-24.