The West Bengal government will replace its existing fleet of buses with 1,200 electric buses in phases in an attempt to reduce carbon footprint and pollution from vehicles, transport minister Firhad Hakim said on Wednesday.
“We will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL) next month for these buses,” Hakim said, while inducting 10 electric buses into the state fleet at Transport Bhavan in Kasba in southeast Kolkata. They are not part of the 1,200 electric buses that the government plans to bring in.
West Bengal has already introduced 80 electric buses.
PMI Electro Mobility Solutions, the company that handed the 10 buses on Wednesday, will provide 50 e-buses in total. The remaining 40 will reach the state within a month or two.
According to the latest deal with companies providing electric buses, the government will pay an amount every month to the firms, which will run the buses, maintain them and also arrange for drivers.
The government will fix fares and provide a conductor who will submit the day’s income to the West Bengal Transport Corporation.
“We plan to start a manufacturing unit in Bengal,” said Anurag Agarwal of PMI
Electro Mobility Solutions, which has supplied electric buses to Surat, Goa, Bhubaneswar and Indore, among other places.
Transport department officials said of the 1,200 buses to be provided by CESL (apart from the 50 to be supplied by PMI), 400 were expected to be on the road by this year and the remaining next year.
The CESL, a public sector undertaking under the Union ministry of power, had floated tenders for over 5,000 electric buses for five cities: Delhi, Kolkata, Surat, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Tata Motors bagged the contract in April.
“By introducing buses powered by alternative energy and doing away with fossil fuel, we plan to cut down nearly 66 per cent of air pollution...” Hakim said.
“Our goal is to do away with fossil fuel by 2030.... I have also told the private bus operators to please bear with us. We will be planning something for them as well.”
