New Delhi: The state-run Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) on Thursday launched a ₹5,500 crore tender to procure 5,580 electric buses. A PSU under the ministry of power, CESL has floated the single tender for 5,450 single-decker and 130 double-decker e-buses.
The tender floated was the outcome of the “Grand Challenge” plan for e-buses which was initiated in June last year by the ministry of power and NITI Aayog. It was ideated after several state governments floated tenders with unstructured standards for e-buses and failed to get bidders. Gauging the lack of uniformity in the technical and financial specifications, the Centre decided to aggregate the demand of a few big cities as an experiment, which was then termed as the grand challenge. The grand challenge was open for nine cities with a population of more than 4 million, but ultimately five were able to meet the set requirements in terms of finances and paperwork.
Now under the programme, Kolkata will get 2,000 pure electric buses, Delhi and Bengaluru will have 1,500 e-buses each, while Hyderabad will get 300 and Surat 150 such zero emission buses. The first set of buses will start coming from July this year and the buses will go to cities as per the depot infrastructure readied by them.
