Not a soft-pedal issue as Centre puts pedal to metal on e-ricks

In a move that will give a huge relief to the owners of old e-rickshaws, Centre on Friday agreed to extend the last date of registration for old e-rickshaws till December 31 after Delhi Transport Minister met Union Minister for Transport Nitin Gadkari. “Earlier, old e-rickshaws could be registered only by May. So, today we discussed the issue with Nitin Gadkari and he has agreed to increase registration date of old vehicles till December 31,” said Delhi Transport Minister Gopal Rai, adding that the extension of the deadline will be notified soon.

Explaining that so far only one union has been approved by ICAT to issue forms and certify e-rickshaws, Rai said that he asked Gadkari to allow more unions to register the vehicles.“With only one union registering these vehicles, only 24,000 people have registered for learning licences and a total of 26,000 e-rickshaws have been registered… We asked him to allow more unions to register these vehicles. The move will speed up the registration process,” Rai said.The Transport Department also announced that as soon the decision is notified, they will open multiple e-rickshaw registration centres and will hold special camps to do maximum registration.

Acting on order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to make Delhi pollution-free, he has also proposed to speed up work of the East-West elevated corridor. Rai said the Central Government has agreed on it and soon work on the project will start.Stressing on having weigh-in-motion technology to keep a check on overloaded vehicles, he said that so far there is no system to do mapping of overloaded vehicles entering the city. “So we have discussed that weigh-in-motion machines should be installed 6 km ahead of all the entry points of Delhi… This technology will help us in mapping of running vehicles and could avoid traffic jams due to checking,” Rai said.