Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday launched ‘Switch Delhi’, a mass awareness campaign to sensitise people about the benefits of switching over to EVs (electric vehicles) as well as to make them aware of the incentives under Delhi’s EV Policy. Kejriwal said Delhi had to turn its EV adoption policy into a mass movement, a ‘Jan Andolan’, to have a collective commitment to decrease pollution by purchasing EVs.

The campaign aims at informing, encouraging and motivating each person in Delhi to switch over from polluting vehicles to zero-emission electric vehicles.

He also said the Delhi government had decided that all hired cars being engaged by various departments will now be EVs within the next six months. Kejriwal said, “To address the vehicular pollution in Delhi, in August 2020, the Delhi government notified the landmark Delhi Electric Vehicle Policy.

Our vision is that by 2024, at least 25 per cent of all vehicles in Delhi should be electric vehicles.” He pointed out that the Delhi government had rolled out a lot of incentives on the purchase of EVs. Incentives on EVs range from a maximum of Rs 30,000 for 2-wheelers and 3-wheelers and up to Rs 1,50,000 on the purchase of 4-wheelers.

The government has made road tax and registration fees also completely free on EVs. Since EVs cannot run on petrol, the Delhi government will issue tenders to develop 100 public charging stations spread across the city.

On the positive impact of the policy, Kejriwal said, “Since the launch of our EV policy last August, nearly 6000 new EVs have been registered in Delhi.

Maximum EVs have been registered under subsidies and the rest are in the process. This is not sufficient. We need to do much more to promote this on a large scale. We have to turn this into a mass movement, a ‘Jan Andolan’, which means that when we decide to purchase any vehicle for our home, office or business, it should be an EV to show our collective commitment to decrease pollution.”

Kejriwal appealed to every vehicle owner in Delhi to switch over from polluting vehicles to zero-emission electric vehicles. He also appealed to RWAs, market associations, delivery fleets and large corporate houses to play a major role in this regard.

He wanted business houses to set up charging points on their business premises.