In order to enhance clean mobility in the road transport sector, the Department of Heavy Industries has sanctioned 2,636 charging stations under the second phase of the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric (FAME) Vehicles in India scheme. With this, the total number of charging stations planned to be installed across select cities has gone up to about 14,000.
Minister of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises Prakash Javadekar said that in future at least one charging station will be available in most of the select cities in a grid of 4 Km x 4 km. He said this would boost the confidence of electric vehicles users and encourage OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to launch the new EV models.
The Department of Heavy Industry had invited Expressions of Interest (EoI) for deploying EV charging infrastructure, from cities with a population of over one million, State/UT capitals, smart cities, and those in special category states.
About 106 proposals from public and private Entities for the deployment of about 7,000 EV charging stations were received.
After evaluation of these proposals as per the EoI, on the advice of the Project Implementation and Sanctioning Committee (PISC), the government sanctioned 2,636 charging stations for 62 cities in 24 states. The proposals were submitted by 19 public entities. Of these 2,636 charging stations, 1,633 will be fast-charging stations and 1,003 will be slow-charging.
Some 317 EV charging stations have been allotted in Maharashtra, 266 in Andhra Pradesh, 256 in Tamil Nadu, 228 in Gujarat, 205 in Rajasthan, 207 in Uttar Pradesh, 172 in Karnataka, 159 in Madhya Pradesh, 141 in West Bengal, 138 in Telangana, 131 in Kerala, 72 in Delhi, 70 in Chandigarh, 50 in Haryana, 40 in Meghalaya, 37 in Bihar, 29 in Sikkim, 25 each in Jammu & Kashmir and Chhattisgarh, 20 in Assam, 18 in Odisha and 10 each in Uttarakhand, Puducherry and Himachal Pradesh.
The sanction letters to the selected entities will be issued in phases after ensuring the availability of land for charging stations, signing of necessary agreements/MoU with concerned partner organizations like city municipal corporation, Discoms and oil companies. Subsequently, each selected public entities are required to initiate the procurement process in a time-bound manner for deployment of sanctioned charging stations.
Source: Business Standard
