The Gujarat government may be debt-ridden, but that hasn’t prevented it from buying 20 luxurious Chevrolet Optras for all the ministers, including the Chief Minister. The 1600 cc cars, manufactured by American auto giant General Motors (GM), were handed over to the ministers on Monday.Apart from Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his 15 ministerial colleagues, Leader of Opposition Amarsinh Chaudhary, Speaker Mangaldas Patel and BJP chief whip Jitendra Sukhadiya have also been given an Optra each. One car has been kept reserved.Responding to a proposal made by the state Legal Department, the government in March had purchased 33 Optras for the high court judges. This apparently prompted the Home/Transport Department to moot a similar proposal to purchase the cars for ministers, a senior official in the department told The Indian Express today.The original price of a Chevrolet Optra is Rs 7.07 lakh, but the government got a good bargain with each car coming for around Rs 6 lakh. The government may place orders for more Optras in case of a Cabinet expansion in the near future, said the official.The new cars replace the Cielos purchased for the ministers in 1998 during the chief ministership of Keshubhai Patel. ‘‘Since Daewoo, which was manufacturing Cielos, has wound up its operations and the spare parts are not available, the government decided to purchase Optras. Besides, the Cielos had already crossed the stipulated 200,000 km limit and it was time to replace them,’’ sources in the Transport Department said.The erstwhile Keshubhai Patel government had purchased about 40 Cielos for its 38 ministers and some other dignitaries. The used cars have been parked at the Gujarat Transport Service (GTS) premises in Gandhinagar. While some of them have been reserved to ferry visiting VVIPs, others will be put up for public auction along with other discarded vehicles in a month or so, sources said.
