BANGALORE: To check pollution in Bangalore, the State Government is now looking at two-wheelers run on auto LPG.

The Transport Department has urged the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) to activate research on auto LPG two-wheelers, citing the huge number of such vehicles in the city. Of the city's 29 lakh vehicles, 20 lakh are two-wheelers.

Making the city "clean and green" was the objective behind the mandatory LPG rule for autorickshaws. "Of the 53,000 autorickshaws in the city, 48,000 have been converted to LPG.

Subsidy

The State Government will offer a subsidy of Rs. 2,000 for every autorickshaw on the conversion cost of Rs. 8,000," Transport Commissioner M.C. Narayana Gowda told presspersons on the sidelines of a seminar on "Inspection and safety: key to a successful and a prosperous auto LPG industry in India" here on Saturday.

On the unauthorised use of domestic LPG in automobiles, the Commissioner said the Government proposed a Central legislation to make the practice a criminal offence. Once the legislation is passed, drivers found with domestic LPG cylinders could end up in jail.

Outlets

He said with 24 petrol outlets equipped with gas-filling stations in the city, there was no shortage of auto LPG in Bangalore.

The problem was outside the city. Across the State, Mysore, Gulbarga and Puttur have one auto LPG dispensing station each, he said.

Earlier, John Joseph Indian Auto LPG Coalition (IAC) warned the Government about the parallel "duplicate LPG industry."

"Unauthorised retro-fitting of LPG in automobiles is very dangerous. Weed out the spurious fly-by-night retrofitters, and impose stern monetary fine for misuse of domestic cylinders," he said.

He said the IAC proposed to open at least 300 auto LPG dispensing stations in the country, up from the current 240.

Of the 240 auto LPG stations in India, 173 were owned by various public sector undertakings while Reliance Industries had 33 stations. Yet, there were over 10 lakh cars running on replaceable cylinders.

This, he reiterated, was a very dangerous trend.

Models

Mr. Joseph said big automobile firms such as Volvo, Chevrolet, Lada, Peugeot and Sabaru had rolled out factory-fitted LPG cars.

"IAC is meeting Ford next week for LPG fitted vehicles. Tata is already working on an auto LPG version of the Indica," he said.

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