Image: IonageThe announcement was made by Heavy Industries and Steel Minister during a conference on EV charging infrastructure held in Bengaluru. According to the ministry, the approved projects include proposals submitted by public-sector oil marketing companies HPCL, IOCL and BPCL, alongside state governments including Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.The charger approvals form part of the PM E-Drive programme, under which ₹2,000 crore (nearly 180 million euros) has been earmarked specifically for public charging infrastructure. The government aims to deploy more than 72,000 public chargers nationwide through the scheme.Alongside the charging rollout, the government is preparing a unified digital platform named Unified Bharat eCharge. The platform is intended to allow EV users to locate chargers, access charging services and complete payments across different charging networks through a single application.The Ministry of Heavy Industries is coordinating with the Ministry of Power, state governments and private-sector stakeholders on grid readiness, interoperability and standardisation as EV adoption increases. According to the ministry, future charging infrastructure deployment will prioritise accessibility, affordability and reliability.The government also highlighted parallel measures aimed at strengthening domestic EV manufacturing and supply chains. These include the ₹18,100 crore production-linked incentive programme (about 1.6 billion euros) for advanced chemistry cell manufacturing and the ₹25,938 crore (€2.3 billion) PLI-Auto scheme supporting EV and component production. In addition, India recently launched a programme focused on rare earth permanent magnets.Under the earlier FAME-II programme, 8,932 public EV chargers were installed. According to ministry data presented earlier this year, India had installed 27,737 EV chargers by March 2026, although not all stations were operational.livemint.com, entrepreneurindia.com, indiatimes.com
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