The country can save 3.5 billion units of electricity every year if the Indian Standard Time (IST) is advanced by 30 minutes, two senior Indian scientists who first proposed the idea of a time-zone shift a decade ago said on Monday.
At present, India is five-and-half hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and among few nations with a fractional shift — in minutes — from GMT. Most countries add or subtract hours from GMT to create their standard time zones.
In 1884, India had two time zones – Bombay time and Calcutta time. On January 1, 1906, British India adopted IST of five-and-half hours ahead of GMT. Only the Assam tea gardens operate one hour ahead of IST (chai bagan time).
