Amendments to be introduced in Motor Vehicles Act: Official

Talking to reporters B S Meena, Secretary, Department of Heavy Industry, said at present there were some hurdles to heavy engineering industries like BHEL, who manufacture huge power plant equipments, to mobilise vehicles to transport their materials to sites where new thermal/hydel power plants were coming up.

The ministry had convened an interdisciplinary meeting recently to assess the difficulties and problems, Meena said. Strategic recommendations have been presented to Road Transport Ministry, National Highway Authority of India and others enabling them to introduce certain amendments in the present Motor Vehicles Act, he said.

He said in principle surface transport ministry had extended its constant and support and before tabling the requisite bill in the Parliament, some state governments have to revise the regulations.

In some state government highway routes,materials exceeding 50 tonnes were not allowed and mega-sized hydraulic cranes were also disallowed in some important road sectors. The amendments in the Motor Vehicles Act were expected to give much relief to heavy industries enabling them the rigid delivery schedule and crystallization of major power plants coming up across the country.

The Railway Ministry had sanctioned the system of single window clearance envisaging industries like BHEL to mobilise materials without any delay and procedural wrangles, he said.

Meena said the Heavy Industries Department was taking up serious considerations in the revival of sick industries. Since 2004 the Centre had identified 33 sick heavy industries out of which revival of 18 industries had already been through, he said. The Hindustan Photo Films in Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu was also included in the agenda, he said.

On the overall performance of heavy industries, Meena said the "grey areas" were in vogue in the sectors of textile machinery manufacture, production of high-end machine tools and mining equipments manufacture.

He observed that there were no takers as regard to machine tool manufacture since private entrepreneurs hesitate to evince interest in the investments and  the mining equipments sector do not seem to match the global standards. He said the Ministry was examining proposals of establishing cluster backed common facility centres, financial or strategic support for implementing new technologies, requisite programs to bridge skill development gap faced by the industries and also grey patches in R&D wings.

For the above, planning commission had already issued its nod and pending some clearances from other ministries the concept of common facility centres would crystallize hopefully in the next six months, he said. As of now the locations and industries specific facility centres were yet to be finalised. However, he said, the models will be in the format of industry and government participation on a fifty-fifty ratio investment.

Meena, who visited BHEL complex here, said "days are not far off when BHEL Trichy Complex will clinch an annual turnover of Rs.20,000 crore." (In the year 2009-10 BHEL Trichy clocked a turnover of Rs.10,008 Crores maintaining Y-o-Y growth rate of 35 per cent plus).