The Group of Transport Ministers instituted by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on Thursday proposed a one nation one tax policy for the whole of the country and said the policy will not only help improve taxation but also impact positively on public health.
“One of the major grievances faced by the service class individual is in transfer of their vehicles from one States to another. The group was of the unanimous opinion that the diverse road tax structure for motor vehicles was a major reason behind this long pending issue. There is an urgent need to harmonise the rates of road tax across the States,” said Chairman of the Group of Ministers, Yoonus Khan, the Transport Minister of Rajasthan.
The GoM held a two day long deliberation at a hotel in Guwahati and came out with some of the major decisions, called Guwahati declaration.
“In order to ascertain seamless transportation of Tourist buses, a consensus among the States emerged that a composite annual fee model be implemented throughout the country, as has been done for the National permit trucks since 2010,” he said adding that like the GST, which has been a game changer for bringing certainty in the tax treatment, the proposed uniform road tax will be immensely helpful to curb the menace of tax evasions by registering the vehicles in low tax jurisdictions and then plying the vehicle in another State.
He said that all the 11 participating States’ Ministers (Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Haryana, Meghalaya, Jharkhand, Rajasthan) resolved to analyse the road accidents data and to make serious efforts to reduce the accidents. “The States will undertake a sustained road safety campaign throughout the year to control and curb the delinquent actions of motorists or drivers,” he said adding that about 1,55,000 people dies of road accidents in five lakh road accidents every year.
“A committee was formed to examine and frame a National Road Safety Policy and Code,” he said.
He further said that the GoM also agreed that process of issuing driving licenses be strengthened by way of adopting and setting up of infrastructure like automation of driving test so as to ensure objective and quality testing for applicants. “There would be focus on technology assistance and elimination of human intervention,” he added.
Khan further said that there is a strong need to reform the vehicle fitness regime. “This would be done through technology based Inspection Centers to be set-up either by the State Government or through Public-private partnership (PPP) mode,” he added.
“The Group noted that the quality of construction of roads as well as vehicles has improved over the years. The axle load for goods vehicles were fixed in 1983. There is an urgent need to increase the carrying capacity of goods vehicles so as to reduce the logistics cost.
The group recommends that the carryings capacity of goods vehicles should be increased by at least 20 per cent,” he said adding that the Group also deliberated on strategies for promoting environment friendly transport systems.