- Thursday, February 27, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
AUTHORITIES in the western Indian state of Maharashtra on Wednesday (19) urged the Narendra Modi government to reduce tax rates on imported vehicles in the upcoming budget on February 1, following calls by electric car manufacturers like Tesla.
Maharashtra is one of India’s leading auto-manufacturing hubs for domestic makers such as Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, both of which are investing in producing electric cars locally and have opposed billionaire Elon Musk’s company’s pressure to slash taxes.
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Aaditya Thackeray, Maharashtra’s environment minister and son of chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, wrote a letter to Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman saying lowering taxes for a limited period of time would boost India’s supply chain ecosystem and manufacturing process for electric vehicles (EVs).
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“Pioneering companies like Tesla, Rivian, Audi, BMW among many others must be given a time-bound concessionary customs rate for the import of vehicles,” Thackeray said in the letter, which was also released by him on social media platform Twitter.
Thackeray, 31, also recommended in his letter lowering the tax rate for a maximum period of three years or for a definite number of vehicles for any manufacturer that wants to import EVs or vehicle components to make such cars in India.
India currently levies import duties as high as 100 per cent on high-end cars, including the electric variants, to protect and promote the indigenous makers.
Tesla, which is eyeing one of the world’s biggest automobile markets, is lobbying to bring down the import duty to 40 per cent.
A number of states, including Maharashtra, have tried to lure Tesla to their respective states after Musk said on social media about dealing with “challenges with the government”.
