Delhi government lauds youth for supporting last leg of EV awareness campaign

The Delhi government has said that it gained "overwhelming support" from the city's youth in the last leg of the eight-week long 'Switch Delhi' EV awareness campaign that ended on Sunday.

As part of the campaign, the government conducted various activities and events during the last week to create awareness among youngsters of the city about both monetary and environmental benefits of electric vehicles.

Hundreds of youth took the 'Switch Delhi' pledge to buy an electric vehicle as their first one. "I strongly feel that switching to an electric vehicle is a much-needed change that is required today. It is important for the youth to turn this campaign into a mass movement," Trisha Pavagadhi, student and a member of Enactus Hansraj, was quoted as saying by PTI.

A wall painting event - Let Me Breathe - was conducted by a student-led group called Vrikshit Foundation. The event was an environment storytelling platform that helped create awareness on social media about the benefits of battery-powered vehicles.

Vrikshit Foundation, led by a group of students, conducted a wall painting event to spread awareness on the Switch Delhi campaign, in New Delhi on Sunday. (ANI Photo)

While starting sensitizing activities for the eight week of the campaign, the city's Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot had said, "The youth of Delhi can play a huge role in making the EV movement in Delhi a mass movement."

In the earlier weeks, the government focused on sensitizing various other groups of the society and for different categories of vehicles. This involved urging delivery chains and big companies to promote electric vehicles, asking resident welfare associations, market associations, malls and cinema halls to set up EV charging stations at their premises.

The AAP government also promised to improve the cities charging infrastructure by adding an EV charging points every three kilometres. Initially, adoption of electric three- and two-wheelers was promoted.

Apart from these, the city's government also announced to convert its fleet of around 2,000 cars to electric vehicles.

(with inputs from agencies)