Raman Singh’s car goes eco-friendly with Jatropha – The Times of India, Raipur, 1^st May, 2005

From May 1, Chhattishgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh’s official vehicle, the Safari, will be running on biodiesel derived from Jatropha seeds. He will be the first CM to use biodiesel in officials vehicles. Security agencies have already given him the green signal to drive on.

“We will produce oil in the Badis (farms) and not import from Khadi (Gilf countries),” said Raman Singh while unveiling plans to promote cultivation of Jatropha in the state for production of biodiesel as an alternate source of energy. This year, eight crore saplings would be planted in 50 villages of Bodla block in Kawardha district.

Over 80lakh Jatropha trees planted in the government nursery, 10 km from Raipur, have reached the production stage. Pointing out that Jatropha biodiesel would transform the economy of the villages within next five years, he said processing units costing Rs.50, 000 each would be installed in 50 villages this year. Each processing unit would be able to produce75 liters of biodiesel an hour and 1000 liters a day.

“This will be sufficient to meet the demands for power in the village,” Raman Singh said. He said he was inspired to promote Jatropha cultivation and produce biodiesel from it on commercial scale by President Kalam and RSS chief K. S. Sudarshan.

He hoped the commerlization of biodiesel in the state would be successful and Chhattishgarh would emerge as second to Brazil, leader in biodiesel production. Claiming that it would be cheaper to run vehicles on biodiesel, he said production cost would be Rs.8 a litre.

Sailendra Shukla, executive director of the Chhattishgarh bio-diesel development authority, later told TOI that the authority recently arranged 600 litres of Jatropha generated bio-diesel to run buses between Dantewara and Surgaja, the two extreme corners of the state.