New Delhi: The Union government Thursday sanctioned a fleet of 50 electric buses for Smart City Bhubaneswar for intra-city and intercity operation under FAME India scheme Phase II in order to give a fillip to clean mobility in public transport system.
The Department of Heavy Industry had invited the Expression of Interest (EoI) from million-plus cities, smart cities, State/UT capitals and cities from special category states for submission of proposal for deployment of electric buses on operational cost basis.
The Centre has approved the sanction of 5,595 electric buses (e-buses) for 64 cities across the country.
According to the Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises, many proposals from 26 states/UTs were received for the deployment of 14,988 e-buses. After evaluation of these proposals as per EoI, on the advice of Project Implementation and Sanctioning Committee (PISC) the government sanctioned 5,095 electric buses to 64 Cities /State Transport Corporations for intra-city operation, 400 e-buses for intercity operation and 100 e-buses for last mile connectivity to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).
These buses will run about 4 billion km during their contract period and are expected to save cumulatively about 1.2 billion litres of fuel over the contract period, which will result in avoidance of 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 emission.