Delhi to get over 1,000 electric buses this month | Latest News Delhi

Delhi will get at least 1,000 new electric buses by the end of March to replace its existing aging fleet of CNG buses, transport minister Pankaj Kumar Singh said on Saturday. He added that Delhi’s transport sector is operating at a loss of ₹235 crore.

A batch of 1,000 CNG buses, mostly under the cluster bus service, reached their end of life of 10 years in June last year but then transport minister Kailash Gahlot ordered a nine-month extension of their service which expires this month. With the new fleet expected to arrive later this month, transport department officials said service is unlikely to be hit.

“This month 1,000 new e-buses will arrive in Delhi. We are working on continuously improving public transport in the city and more buses will soon be added to the fleet to enhance connectivity,” said Singh.

Environment minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa, chairing a meeting of senior officials from various departments on Saturday, said that 7,600 buses including 2,002 e-buses operate in Delhi. He added that the Delhi government will deploy 11,000 buses including 8,000 e-buses on roads by 2026.

“Procurement of 3,680 e-buses will be completed by September 2025 which will promote the public transport system in Delhi. Accordingly, electrification of depots will also take place,” said Sirsa.

According to the economic survey of 2023, an average of 4.1 million passengers commuted daily on public buses in Delhi.

The previous AAP-led government had rolled out the electric vehicles policy in 2020 and set a target to increase the total number of buses in the city to 10,480 by 2025, 80% (8,280 buses) of which were planned to be electric.

Meanwhile, the newly-elected government is yet to decide the future of the Mohalla bus service announced by the AAP government previously. The government had planned to introduce 2,180 smaller nine-metre-long buses by 2025, catering specifically to areas with limited road width or overcrowding where standard 12m buses face operational challenges due to their size and turning radius. These buses were procured from Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.

While the routes and depots were decided and trial runs had begun, the service could not be rolled out. Officials said that the government is reassessing and may decide to roll out the scheme but with a different name.

During the election campaign last month, both the BJP and the Congress had quoted a purported CAG report on the performance audit of DTC that is yet to be tabled in the Delhi assembly, claiming that the previous government caused losses of around ₹4,500 crore by inflating the rate of procurement of buses. This, the parties said, also unduly benefited select private players.