In a major step to curb environmental pollution, the central government has sanctioned the deployment of 5645 electric buses for intracity operations in 65 cities and intercity operations to 8 state transport undertakings.

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, in a recent tweet, said that this initiative will give huge impetus to the automobile sector. It will help clean up cities and give a thrust to the drive Make in India.

Make In India  

The electric buses will be manufactured in India to promote the ‘Make in India’ drive. They will be given to select cities and state transport departments at a subsidized rate. This certainly looks like one of the largest electric bus initiatives the world has seen outside of China. The government also has plans to push the manufacturing of electric car batteries domestically. It is also thinking of a strategy for the electrification of the country’s two-wheelers.

Incentives

The Government apart from providing incentives for electric vehicles will also provide support for charging infrastructure. In the recent budget announcement, the Finance Ministry declared that concessions will be given on the loan taken for the purchase of electric vehicles. The GST council has also recently accepted the Finance Ministry's proposal to reduce taxes on electric vehicles from 12 per cent to 5 per cent. In addition to this, certain parts of electric vehicles have also been exempted from customs duty.

With this step, India has shown that it is focused on adopting EV in all facets as it looks to bring down pollution in its cities and capture economic markets in EVs.