New Delhi, Nov 15 (IANS): With a view to streamline the tourist permit regime, the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has issued a draft notification to supersede the All India Tourist Vehicle (Authorisation or Permit) Rules, 2021.

The rules notified in 2021 provided a significant boost to the tourism sector by streamlining and simplifying the permit regime for tourist vehicles.

Officials said that with the proposed All India Tourist Vehicles (Permit) Rules, 2022, the tourist permit regime is proposed to be further streamlined and strengthened.

The key objectives of the proposed rules include to simplify the procedure for All India Permit applicants and to reduce compliance burden, the provision of authorization and All India Tourist Permit has been made independent of each other.

Apart from this, more categories of tourist vehicles, with lesser permit fees for lesser capacity vehicles (less than 10) have been proposed.

This is expected to provide considerable financial relief to smaller tourist operators having smaller vehicles with lower seating capacity as they will now be required to pay lower fees commensurate with the seating capacity of their vehicles.

It is also meant to promote deployment of electric vehicles in large numbers and a streamlined regulatory ecosystem at no cost to the operators has been proposed.

Comments and suggestions are invited from all stakeholders within a period of 30 days, the officials added.