New Delhi: Training his guns again on sports utility vehicles, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh today asked the users of these fuel-guzzling cars to pay full market price for diesel which is subsidised for the benefit of farmers.
Ramesh, however, made it clear that his 'deliberate' criticism of the SUVs need not be seen as him being against the automobile sector.
He had recently called SUVs as 'criminals' and 'Socially Useless Vehicles' for being bad emitters, fuelling a controversy in the auto sector. Germany, which is home to auto major BMW, had also taken strong exception to the remarks.
"Why should they get subsidised fuel meant for farmers," Ramesh asked while speaking at a conference on 5th Sustainability Summit organised by CII.
"We introduce the (diesel) subsidy for a certain economic purposes but have ended up with a wholly different purpose...," he said while favouring incentives to the firms aiming at sustainable development.
Ramesh made it clear that he is not trying to hurt the growth of the auto industry in the country.
"I am not knocking the growth of the automotive industry but those who want to use diesel cars must pay the full market price for the fuel. Why should they get subsidised fuel meant for farmers?" he said.
Ramesh said there was a need for creating an incentive structure from a fiscal point of view particularly which rewards and added that stimulating sustainable development at the producer-end is absolutely important.
The Minister also called for an incentive structure which has to be skewed in favour of sustainable development choice as far as consumers are ready to embrace such mechanism.
"We need to move to a system which looks at rewarding or incentivise those companies that actually promote the objective of sustainable development, that promote energy conservation, water conservation and protection and preservation of natural resources," Ramesh said.