Electric buses to hit Srinagar and Jammu roads soon

Bilal Bashir Bhat
Jammu, Jan 21 (Only Kashmir): The Jammu and Kashmir’s twin capital cities Srinagar and Jammu to get electric buses soon under the Smart Cities Mission, this was announced by the state Minister for Transport, Sunil Kumar Sharma in the Legislative Assembly here on Saturday.
Battery-operated buses are one of the components of the Smart City project and a part of the Centre’s drive to encourage automobile companies to shift to manufacture of electric vehicles.



“Under Smart Cities Scheme, procurement of 140 electric buses along with 08 charging stations have been proposed for both capital cities,” said Sunil Kumar.
He said that now the government is determined to introduce electric buses and is identifying charging points to charge the batteries which power the buses.
The Minister added that under FAME INDIA scheme, 15 buses have been sanctioned and under JKIDP, procurement of 40 electric buses & 20 electric rickshaws have been proposed.
Besides, Electric buses the minister announced UBER Cab services- a global taxi technology operating in 633 cities worldwide, to be introduced in Jammu and Kashmir by March 2018.
“In this digital day and age, timely and necessary technological updations need to be introduced so that the department can fulfil its basic mandate of providing better transportation facilities to the people with effective safety measures”, the Minister said. (OK)