Niti Aayog releases draft model concession agreement for EVs

Government think tank Niti Aayog has come out with a Model Concession Agreement (MCA) document for introducing electric-bus fleet in cities for public transportation on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode.

According to Niti Aayog, the document titled 'Public Private Partnership in Operation and Maintenance of Electric Buses in cities' has been developed based on international best practices, and with view of providing cleaner, more efficient and affordable public transportation.

"The objective is to provide O&M efficiency of city bus fleet for the authority, while ensuring bankability of the project for the private sector," the Aayog said in its report.

The stakeholders are required to share comments by October 4, 2018.

The government is mulling giving target to state public transporters to deploy certain percentage of electric vehicles in their new orders, a top Niti Aayog official had said recently.

According to latest estimates, India has 1 to 1.5 lakh electric vehicles that are projected to grow to about 5 per cent of the total vehicles in the next five years.

Of the about 24 million vehicles sold in India in 2017-18, electric vehicles accounted for barely about 1 per cent.