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Govt scraps sops for 400,000 e-scooters
The ministry of heavy industries has rejected the subsidy claims of manufacturers for over 400,000 e-scooters, saying they flouted localization norms laid down by the government’s FAME-II incentive scheme. The move by the ministry, which keeps track of how many vehicles have been incentivized under the scheme, brought down the number of e-two wheelers in its FAME-II tally from nearly 980,000 to 564,000. The move will impact three large manufacturers the most —Hero Electric, Okinawa Autotech and Greaves Cotton’s Ampere—which were served notices by the government to repay subsidies. Investigations found them guilty of flouting the phased manufacturing program (PMP) norms, which lay down localization-related criteria for subsidies under FAME-II. Despite the setback, the government remains confident of meeting its target of incentivizing one million e-scooters under the scheme, Hanif Qureshi, joint secretary, ministry of heavy industries, told Mint. “The earlier figures included the rejected claims. Those have now been dropped. Our target of 1 million e-2-wheelers is still to be met. With the new subsidy regime, the government is confident of achieving the target," he said. The ministry has so far spent ₹3,113 crore in incentives from its ₹10,000 crore corpus on subsidizing vehicles across two, three and four-wheelers and electric buses. Before the government sent out recovery notices to OEMs for alleged wrongful subsidy claims in the past and rejected new claims, this amount was around ₹5,000 crore for a claim of close to 1 million scooters. People privy to discussions within the ministry told Mint that over ₹1,200 crore worth of incentives are yet to be released by the ministry since April. “Held-up subsidies are being processed now. The claims will be paid from now onwards," Qureshi said. The government will significantly reduce the quantum of incentives it offers to the electric two-wheeler segment from 1 June. The incentive amount has been slashed to a maximum of ₹22,500 from ₹60,000. Source - Mint
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