E-autos: At 743, women's quota not full, transport dept to open another window

New Delhi: As the Delhi government continues with its push for registering over 4,000 new e-autos in the Capital — stressing on allotting 33 per cent of them exclusively to women — it has not yet seen much enthusiasm from women applicants, data from the Transport department showed, according to which against the 1,406 reserved slots for women, only 743 applications have been received.

While the Delhi government is pushing for more women to buy e-autos in a bid to make it safer for more women in the city to take autorickshaws, the response so far has not been great as the data showed. Since the applications were invited, the Delhi Transport department received a total of 20,589 applications for the 4,261 available slots for e-autos —of which 19,846 were from men.

The Transport department said that a computerized draw of lots was held on Monday to select 2,855 male applicants for the new e-autos and 285 additional male applicants to cater to a 10 per cent wait list, whereas it was decided that the 743 women would directly be eligible for the Letters of Intent. Meanwhile, seeing that not enough women had applied for the e-auto permits, the Delhi government said that it will hold a second round to invite fresh applications for the balance 663 slots available to women and hold a special draw of lots for these permits.

According to officials, the first list of male applicants selected for the permits and the 743 women applicants has been put up on the transport department website and the Letter of Intent (LOI) to them will be issued by February 28. They added that once the LOI is issued to these successful applicants, they must purchase their TSR and apply for registration on the Single Window portal of CESL before April 30, failing which their LOI will be surrendered and go to the waitlist.

The transport department said that in case the remaining 663 slots for women are not filled, the LOI for these will be given to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation with permission to operate them through an aggregator for last-mile connectivity. It added that this would be on the condition that only women drivers are deployed by the DMRC for these autos.

Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said that the single-window system for registration, subsidy disbursement and interest subvention of the new e-autos will make the process simple for all successful applicants, adding that his government is uncompromising on reserving 33 per cent of new vehicles for women. "This is why we will be reopening applications for women," he said.

Apart from the colour differentiation (blue for e-autos driven by men and lilac for those driven by women), the transport minister said that strict enforcement would also be put in place once these autos start running to ensure that this benefit given to women drivers does not get misused by men. To ensure this, the transport department has decided that after allotment under the women's quota, the transfer of an e-auto can be permitted only after it has been driven by a woman for five years.

"Our aim is to make a public transport system which is conducive for women passengers and the most effective step to do that is to create a system steered by women themselves," Gahlot said.