Govt to set up a new department for auto sector: Nitin Gadkari

The department will oversee automobile sector requirements like emission norms and safety issues

To oversee the automobile sector, including emission norms and safety issues, government will set up a separate Transport Department in the Highways Ministry, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said today.

"We had requested the Cabinet Secretariat and the Prime Minister Narenadra Modi for a separate transport department. Cabinet Secretary has approved the proposal. After obtaining Expenditure Finance Committee approval we will go to the Cabinet soon," the Road Transport and Highways Minister said.

Gadkari said the step is intended to streamline issues related to motor vehicles as its gamut is huge and involves issues ranging from fuel technology to motor body specifications and fuel emissions.

"Transport Department is not independent. Road and Transport comes under one secretary now. There is a huge work load and we have to do a lot of work in the automobile sector," he said.

He said the department will not only oversee the automobile sector requirements like emission norms and safety issues but would also look at exports and other aspects.

"Exports worth Rs 2.5 lakh crore are done by automobile industry... Mumbai Port Trust alone has exported 1.5 lakh car. Manufactures will export Euro VI compliant cars also from here," he said.

He said the separate transport department will have auto experts including for areas such as pollution and alternative fuel like ethanol, biodiesel biogas and electric vehicles.

The idea behind separate Transport Department is also to end corruption and make the functioning of the ministry and departments transparent, accomplishing tasks in a time-bound manner, he said.

The Minister said streamlining these issues was essential in the wake of the mammoth task of regularising vehicles and ensuring compliance of emission norms.

According to Society of Indian Automobile Manufactures, the industry produced a total of 23,366,246 vehicles, including passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, 3-wheelers and 2-wheelers in April-March 2015 as against 21,500,165 in April-March 2014, registering a growth of 8.68% over the same period last year.

He said the separate department will be tasked to ensure faster growth of the sector and would ensure that vehicle emission norms are complied with.

The move to carve out a separate department also assumes significance in view of the government rolling out stricter emission norms to curb pollution.

The government on January 6 had announced its decision to advance the date by four years to April 1, 2020 for implementing Bharat Stage VI (equivalent to Euro VI norms followed globally) for supply of cleaner auto fuel, by altogether skipping the Euro V grade norms.