Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and lieutenant governor V K Saxena flagged off 400 electric buses on Tuesday, taking the number of such vehicles to 800 in the national capital.
Kejriwal said the goal is to have over 8,000 electric buses on Delhi’s roads by the end of 2025. “After this, there will be more than 10,000 buses in the city, of which 8,280, or 80%, will be electric. Delhi will be known across the world for its adoption of electric buses,” he added.
The LG’s office said on microblogging site X: “These 400 buses are the first tranche of the 1,500 e-buses being provided by the Government of India under the FAME-II scheme for creating a robust and green public transport infrastructure in Delhi.”
The LG’s office added that 921 of the 1,500 buses under this scheme are being provided with FAME-II subsidy of INR 417 crore by the central government while Delhi government will bear the subsidy of INR 262 crore for the remaining 579 buses.
“These electric buses will go a long way in fighting and mitigating air pollution in the city, besides providing comfortable and safe transport to the people of Delhi,” the LG’s office added.
Kejriwal said at 800, Delhi had the highest number of electric buses in the entire country. “We have a December 2025 target to have 10,480 buses on the streets of Delhi. Of these, 80% – 8,280 – would be electric buses,” he added.
Transport minister Kailash Gahlot said, “We want to make sure that people who come to Delhi from various parts of the world during the upcoming G20 Summit see it as a beautiful city.”
The electric buses are equipped with CCTV cameras, panic buttons and GPS. The vehicles can run for 225km on a single charge. The buses will cover Mayapuri, Nehru Place, Rohini 1 and 2 and Banda Bahadur Marg depots.
“By the end of this year, 1,900 e-buses will be deployed in Delhi, reducing over 1 lakh tonnes of CO2 emissions annually,” Gahlot said.
According to Gahlot, while the central government has provided a subsidy of INR 417 crore on 921 buses, Delhi government will bear the cost of running these buses for 12 years at INR 3,674 crore, which is 90% of the total cost.
Delhi government has granted contracts for an additional 3,980 electric buses, which will start arriving soon, the transport minister added.
Meanwhile, at a press briefing, leader of the opposition in Delhi assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for providing 400 more electric buses to the people of Delhi. “The central government has provided these under the FAME-2 scheme. Earlier, 300 electric buses had been given to Delhi under the same scheme,” he said.
