This Indian state plans 1000 EV charging stations by 2024

The West Bengal government on Wednesday said that it is planning to set up 1,000 electric vehicle charging stations across the state over the next two years. With this, the state government aims to encourage greater adoption of environment-friendly vehicles, reports PTI. This move comes at a time when several state governments across India, along with the central government, have been pushing for greater electric mobility adoption under their respective EV policies.

The lack of EV charging infrastructure has always been marked as one of the hurdles to the growth of electric mobility in India. While Delhi and Uttar Pradesh remain at the top of the EV adoption map in India with the faster expansion of the charging network and other facilities along with a higher EV purchase rate, West Bengal still lacks the growth pace. Speaking about that, West Bengal's state power secretary S Suresh Kumar said people are not buying electric vehicles because of high costs and lack of charging infrastructure.

He also said that to clear the confusion in people's minds about electric vehicles, the state government has partnered with a private agency to bring the EV Expo to Kolkata to spread awareness. "We hope to set up 1000 charging stations in the next two years," Kumar said. He also said that the 16th EV Expo and an EV rally would be held in Kolkata, the state capital, later this week. The state official also said that the oil companies had been given the mandate to set up the charging infrastructure, and the government should handle the backend for those like power.

Talking further, the official said that the state government has plans to set up one EV charging station every 25 kilometres on four-lane highways and one charging station within every three square kilometres in urban areas. Earlier in October this year, the state-owned power generation and distribution agency WBSEDCL had invited bids for 205 electric vehicle charging stations.