New Delhi: In a major push to augment bus transport in cities, the Union Cabinet Wednesday approved the Rs 57,613-crore PM-eBus Sewa scheme, under which the central government will give financial support of Rs 20,000 crore for operations of 10,000 electric buses, mainly in cities with little to no organised transport service, and infrastructure will be developed for green mobility.
The scheme was first announced in 2021 in the Union budget by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Of its total outlay, the Centre will provide Rs 20,000 crore for a period of 10 years while the rest will come from states.
The funds will be used for two components: augmenting city bus services and for green urban mobility initiatives, such as setting up charging infrastructure, etc.
Union minister Anurag Thakur, while briefing the media about the scheme, said: “PM-eBus Sewa is aimed at augmenting city bus operations in cities, mostly those which don’t have organised bus services. The scheme will be implemented on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) basis.”
The scheme will cover cities having a population of 3 lakh and above according to Census 2011. Under this, 169 cities are eligible for PM-eBus Sewa and the final candidates for the electric buses will be selected through a competition.
“Up to 169 cities have a population of 3 lakh to 40 lakh, according to Census 2011, and are eligible to apply for the scheme. Of these, 100 cities will be selected through a challenge,” said Thakur.
He added that cities with populations of 20 to 40 lakh will be eligible for 150 electric buses, while those with populations of 5 to 20 lakh and 3 to 5 lakh will get 100 and 50 buses, respectively.
For the green urban mobility initiative, 181 cities are eligible to apply, according to Thakur.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), which is the nodal ministry for the implementation of the scheme, is working out the modalities of the scheme and plans to launch it in “the next few months”.
While nine big cities which are covered under the Centre’s Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) II scheme, that aims to boost the development of electric vehicles, will not be eligible to apply for buses under PM-eBus Sewa, these cities can apply for funding under its green mobility component, ministry officials said.
A senior ministry official told ThePrint: “Up to 169 cities are eligible to apply for the bus augmentation scheme and (the final cities) will be chosen through a competition. The final number of cities that will get the buses will depend on the number of cities that apply under the challenge.”
In most cities, especially tier-2 and tier-3 cities, organised bus transport services are either non-existent or poor.
Urban transport experts have welcomed the approval of PM-eBus Sewa and termed it a possible “game changer” in the transport sector.
Amit Bhatt, Managing Director-India, International Council on Clean Transportation, told ThePrint: “The PM-eBus Sewa initiative has the potential to be a game changer, as it can bolster public transport capacity by 25 per cent. Moreover, the focus on electric buses within this initiative offers substantial advantages from a public health standpoint.”
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‘Crucial support being provided to cities’
The PM-eBus Sewa scheme will be implemented in a PPP mode, as was announced by Sitharaman in her budget speech in 2021.
“A new scheme will be launched at a cost of Rs 18,000 crore to support augmentation of public bus transport services. The scheme will facilitate deployment of innovative PPP models to enable private sector players to finance, acquire, operate and maintain over 20,000 buses,” she had said.
However, the initial proposal to introduce 20,000 electric buses has been slashed to 10,000.
Under PM-eBus Sewa, cities will rope in private players who will procure the buses while state governments will pay for their operations and for providing associated infrastructure, such as depots, etc.
Thakur said that of the Rs 20,000 crore from central assistance, Rs 15,930 crore will be given for bus operations, Rs 2,264 for developing infrastructure and Rs 1,506 crore for green urban mobility initiatives.
“State governments can either allow private players to collect the fare or pay them on a per kilometre basis,” said the housing ministry official mentioned earlier.
A second official told ThePrint: “Our aim is to roll out the scheme in the next few months and the procurement of buses will be done over a period of two years. The scheme will be valid for a period of 10 years based on the date of procurement.”
Under the green urban mobility initiative, bus infrastructure, multimodal interchange facilities, national common mobility card-based automated fare collection system, charging infrastructure, etc, will be developed, according to ministry officials.
Madhav Pai, CEO of World Resources Institute India, a research organisation, told ThePrint “The support being provided to medium and smaller cities, that lack robust transport systems, is particularly crucial.”
“With an estimated daily ridership of 6 million passengers, these buses are expected to cover 6 billion bus-kilometres throughout their lifecycle. Furthermore, the adoption of electric buses could potentially reduce 16.5 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent tailpipe emissions over the course of 10 years,” he added.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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