Bengal firm on August 1 deadline for autorickshaw conversion

The West Bengal government will stick to the August 1 deadline for conversion of the existing autorickshaws in the Kolkata metropolitan area to four-stroke vehicles, while the lion's share of the city autorickshaws are yet to convert to cleaner fuels.

Speaking to Business Standard, state transport secretary Sumantra Chowdhury today confirmed that his department had no plans to defer the deadline for conversion beyond August 1.

He, however, declined to comment on what action would be taken on vehicles that fail to convert within the Calcutta High Court(HC) deadline.

The HC had fixed a deadline to phase out two-stroke autorickshaws that will be replaced by four-stroke liquified petroleum gas(LPG) variants by July 31 of this year.

The Bengal government had missed the target date of December 31, 2008, and was accused of dragging its feet on the implementation of the HC order directing a ban on two-stroke autorickshaws.

"The public sector banks led by the United Bank of India(UBI) have already sanctioned loans to 988 vechicle owners of the 2,400 applications received so far", informed a senior UBI official. He also added that most of the vehicle owners did not have vaild legal papers that hindered the process of loan sanction.

The lead bank was yet to collect the rejection data from its associate banks.

The PSU banks are offering a loan of Rs 95,000 for a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vehicle priced at Rs 1.26 lakh.

The state government would give a subsidy of Rs 5,000 and Bajaj Auto would chip in with a rebate of Rs 5,000 per autorickshaw, besides paying Rs 6,000 for an old two-stroke vehicle.

The autorickshaw owner would have to pay Rs 10,000 from his pocket. Loans are offered at a 12.25 per cent interest rate for a 60-month period with a three months moratorium.

Two-stroke auto rickshaw operators were scheduled to submit their applications in the Public Vehicles Department (PVD) within June 6, but only around 20,000 auto-rickshaw operators had applied for the conversion till June 7.

Kali Ghosh, secretary, Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) eastern region,however, claimed that most of the autorickshaw owners had applied and many have even converted to cleaner fuels by now.

"The remaining are also in the process of conversion. It will take some time before banks can disburse loans and the manufacturer can supply the vehicles", he added saying that the entire fleet of autorickshaws, a major mode of public transport in the city, cannot be pulled out on such short notice.

CITU did not indicate any possible agitation in case the state government tries to implement the ban from August.