Re: Car Owners May Not Get Subsidised Diesel
Govt can never remove diesel subsidy (in general)if they want to stay in power.. Removing it for only for diesel cars will lead to black market.
Govt. has not accepted the Parikh comitee recommendation of imposing separate tax on diesel cars during the budget. Recently toyota (etios, altis), chevrolet (beat,) maruti (ritz, swift) and many other have invested major capital in diesel car manufacturing.
If govt imposes extra tax on diesel car, then equal and high ownership cost of diesel car will lead to slowdown in auto (diesel car) leading to wastage of recently invested capital. Also the majority custemer s are likely to stay away from both petrol and diesel cars, leading to load on public transport, their on subsidised diesel and infrastructure, Govt is not capable of handling such duel load at present, as govt. has to spend most of its income on nonproductive beurocracy and bpl schemes.
Govt. can't afford the slowdown, as auto industry brings major tax collection to its exchequer.
Also auto industrialist s extend financial support to political parties in power.It's not that the govt. cares for common tax payer.
Indian diesel car custemer takes benefits of low cost fuel during its first 1lakh km, then sales off the car fearing the the cost of heavy maintainance cost later on. Then he becomes new custemer for new car. Petrol car don't have heavy maintenance in long run , but custemer prefers to spend initial extra cost (loan)on new diesel car rather than fuel cost of petrol for which no loan facility is available. Auto makers have understood the economics well.
So neither subsidy reduction nor an extra tax on diesel car seems possible in near future.