New safety rules for e-rickshaws soon

NEW DELHI: Importing motors, batteries and other parts from China to assemble e-rickshaws and selling them in India by fly-by-night operators won't be possible any more with the road transport ministry set to tighten norms governing safety and quality of such vehicles.
The new norms and mandatory tests would take care of safety concerns including roll over, brake, battery quality, speed, installation of rear view mirrors for drivers and other parameters for all vehicle parts besides passing gradient test since e-rickshaws also need to cross flyovers.All new models will have to undergo about 28 tests and must comply with the norms before these are registered and are allowed to ply.
However, the biggest catch is how the government would regularize the thousands of e-rickshaws that are already plying or standing idle after the Delhi high court order.
TOI has learnt that there will be one-time registration of these battery-operated vehicles. The mechanism that is being mooted is the e-rickshaw association would prepare a list of e-rickshaw models and certify them before submitting it to the state government, in case of the capital it would be Delhi government by a cut off date. The transport department would then submit it to test agencies notified under the Central Motor Vehicle Rules such as ICAT and IRAI. After getting the certificate from test agencies the department would register e-rickshaws of that model.
But this provision is set to face severe criticism since pulling power tests on 53 e-rickshaws by TERI showed that the components and processes used in the manufacturing of these vehicles are not standardized. "Therefore, the performances of e-rickshaws belonging to the same model vary," it had concluded.
S P Singh of IFTRT, a think tank on transport issues, said, "These vehicles have over 150 variants with different size, structure, material, wheels and tyres, mismatch in payload and gross vehicle weight. Any attempt to retrospective regularization is illegal."
He added e-rickshaw kits were imported, assembled and sold in Delhi and other cities and were purchased ignoring notices issued since 2012. Since the manufacturers and assemblers have shortchanged the public exchequer and have sold unsafe, non-certified vehicles for greed they should be directed to take back these vehicles and refund the money to buyers. "There cannot be trade off between road safety and business gains," Singh said.