Electric vehicles will bear green number plates; NITI Aayog backs free parking, toll waiver for three years

The electric vehicles in India will be assigned green number plates, this was revealed as the government’s think-tank NITI Aayog works out on details of the draft policy on e-vehicles. Currently, vehicles plying on Indian roads bear four types of number plates – white with black numbers for personal use, yellow for commercial purpose, black with yellow numbers for self-drive rental vehicles, and blue assigned to embassy vehicles – according to this Business Standard report.  Apart from that there two special category number plates allotted for select VVIPs. The red coloured plate is used by the President of India and governors of states. And, then there is number plates used by military vehicles, which follow a unique numbering system with the first or third character on an upward-pointing arrow, according to The Economic Times   report. The draft policy being drawn by NITI proposes free parking and toll waiver scheme for e-vehicles for three years and seeks residential, office and shopping complexes to set aside 10 percent parking space for electric cars. Road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari has fixed 2030 as deadline for implementation of electric vehicles policy. Concerns related to increasing oil prices and rising pollution levels, mostly in urban centres, have forced the government to push for e-vehicles on Indian roads. The Niti Aayog charted out a 15-year roadmap for complete electrification after which shared mobility players such as Ola, Uber and Zoom started to tap into electric vehicles market. New Delhi put an order for 10,000 electric vehicles to upgrade fleet at some of agencies, according to ET report