State Govt. of Maharashtra has recently announced two different policy changes related to vehicles registration both of which are welcome by car buyers in the state. First and the most important one is complete tax exemption on electric vehicles from Motor Vehicle tax in Maharashtra state. This exemption is also applicable on the electric vehicles from other states re-registered in Maharashtra. For electric car/two-wheeler makers and potential electric vehicle makers, this is a very encouraging news as this will cut down the cost of an electric vehicle considerably and will attract more sales of the electric vehicles which are not only cheap in terms of running cost, but also cause negligible noise pollution and are much less burden on the environment. The sales of electric vehicles is expected to increase in the state after this tax rebate.
Mahindra Reva has showcased its electric car Reva NXR at the Auto Expo 2012 which it plans to launch soon in India but lack of policy announcements have caused some delays and discouraged the makers to launch it earlier. Since the car is being tested for a long time now and the test mules have been spotted several times on India roads, we expect to see the launch of Reva NXR very soon.
image – Mahindra Reva NXR Electric Car
Second important policy change is also quite significant – Reduction in tax on imported and company owned vehicles in Maharashtra. This decision has been taken to prevent the registration of imported vehicles and company owned vehicles in neighboring states of Maharashtra. Since the registration taxes in Maharashtra were higher compared to neighboring states, more and more imported cars and company owned vehicles were being registered in neighboring states which were being used in Maharashtra. To suppress this trend and encourage owners to register their cars in their own state, Maharashtra govt. has reduced the taxes to 20% from the previous rate of 22% for petrol and 26% for diesel cars.
Both these policy changes (or reforms) will help Maharashtra state get better environment by encouraging the use of electric vehicles and will reduce the number of outside-the-state-registered vehicles in the state thus helping improve the tax revenues as well as bring more order to the roads of Maharashtra.
via – Financial Express
