By IANS,
New Delhi : The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) Friday welcomed union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s suggestion to remove subsidy on diesel used in cars, saying this will prevent people from buying bigger vehicles.
“There are now very strong reasons and evidences to justify the need for a fiscal policy to check dieselisation of our car segment,” said Anumita Roychoudhury, CSE’s executive director-research.
CSE has been consistently raising the issue of misuse of public policy on fuel pricing inciting dieselisation, increasing toxic risk from diesel emissions, worsening energy guzzling from bigger diesel engines and aggravating revenue losses from luxury consumption of diesel in cars.
“Distorted fuel pricing has driven the move towards diesel in India. In 2000, diesel cars were only four percent of India’s new car sales. Within a decade, they have increased to 36 percent and this is expected to be 50 percent soon,” she said.
According to official reports, diesel cars are already the second largest users of diesel in the country — cars are using more diesel than agriculture and buses.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha Thursday, Mukherjee said the government could consider the opposition’s suggestion to scrap diesel subsidy for car owners.