The Department of Heavy Industries (DHI) ministry today announced that the government has sanctioned 5,595 electric buses to 64 cities, in 18 states and 3 Union Territories for intra- and inter-city operations under FAME India scheme phase II.

The details comes within 10 days of the informal announcement made by the NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, who said the move will give huge impetus to the automobile sector, and drive the Make-in-India campaign.

The Heavy Industry ministry had invited an Expression of Interest (EoI) from million-plus cities, smart cities, States, Union Territory capitals and cities from special category states for submission of proposal for deployment of electric buses on operational cost basis.

The government says it received 86 proposals from 26 States/UTs 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 e-buses for 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).

With this, each selected City/STUs is now required to initiate the procurement process in a time bound manner for deployment of sanctioned electric buses on operational cost basis. As per the EoI, buses which satisfy required localisation level and technical eligibility notified under FAME India scheme phase II will be eligible for funding.

The government estimates these buses will run about 4 billion kilometres during their contract period and will result in cumulatively saving of about 1.2 billion litres of fuel over the contract period, which will result into avoidance of 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 emission.