Chandigarh leads in NITI Aayog’s India Electric Mobility Index

Chandigarh has emerged as the leader in the electric vehicle (EV) adoption, charging infrastructure readiness and EV technology and innovation in the country, a NITI Aayog report has said.

The NITI Aayog’s first India Electric Mobility Index (IEMI), which assessed the performance across three themes of EV adoption, has also ranked Delhi and Maharashtra among the frontrunners in the country.

In its report titled ‘India Electric Mobility Index (IEMI) 2024’, the NITI Aayog evaluated all Indian states and Union Territories across 16 indicators under three core themes.

According to the report, Chandigarh, Delhi and Maharashtra have emerged as frontrunners in the overall IEMI score, reflecting the robust ecosystems.

In transport electrification, Delhi and Maharashtra are the frontrunners while Haryana, Karnataka, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh lead in charging infrastructure readiness, the report said.

The NITI Aayog said Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana and Telangana stand out as frontrunners in terms of EV research and innovation.

According to the report, currently 29 states and UTs in India have notified EV policies, with four in draft stage where policies drive localised action through targeted incentives, regulatory support and region specific strategies aligned with national goals.

“India’s EV market saw a notable rise in 2024 with private vehicle adoption, of electric two-wheelers and cars, reaching 5.3 per cent with over 12 lakh EVs registered in 2024,” the NITI Aayog said, while reporting that as of December 2024, India has over 25,000 public EV charging stations.

To encourage people to switch to green mobility, Chandigarh has recently announced to extend the benefit of incentive to the buyers of 1,500 more electric cars in the city.

The incentive given on purchase of electric cars was discontinued after the quota of first 2,000 cars fixed in the EV Policy had been exhausted in May this year.

The buyers of the first 2,000 electric cars had availed of financial benefit in the range of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh each.

Focusing on accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles, strengthening the existing policy framework, and achieving the EV penetration target of 18% for the financial year 2025–26 in the city, the UT Administration has also announced insurance support for electric two-wheelers, enhanced subsidy on the purchase of electric two-wheelers besides offering additional benefit to women buyers of electric two-wheelers.

Similarly, the incentive for electric bicycles has also been increased.

In the policy, rolled out in September 2022, the Chandigarh Administration has offered incentives in the range from Rs 3,000 to Rs 2 lakh for the first 42,000 buyers of e-vehicles of all categories during the policy period of five years.

Moreover, UT will also further expand the EV charging station network across all areas of Chandigarh, ensuring comprehensive coverage across all areas.

Craze rising, but slowly

Amidst the rising vehicular population, which has surpassed the human count, giving Chandigarh the dubious distinction of having the highest per capita vehicle density in the country, the craze for electric vehicles is also picking up in the first planned city of India.

The fad to own swanky and high-end e-vehicles has touched the roof with Porsche, a Germany auto giant’s Taycan Turbo S priced Rs 2.53-crore becoming the costliest battery-operated light motor vehicle (LMV) hitting Chandigarh’s roads.

So far, six electric high-end LMVs each worth over Rs 2-crore and 38 each priced above Rs 1-crore and below Rs 2-crore have been registered here.

Chandigarh has registered 8,469 zero-emission vehicles since 2020 in a rather slow but steady rise in the number of e-vehicles.

This is evident from the fact that from just 46 e-vehicles, including 35 four-wheelers and 11 two-wheelers, registered here on 2020, the year-to-year registrations went up from 245 in 2021 to 1,006 in 2022, 2,870 in 2023, 3,078 in 2024, and 1,224 battery-operated two and four-wheelers were registered in Chandigarh this year till June 30.

Of the total 8,469 e-vehicles registered in Chandigarh from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2025, as many as 5,442 are two-wheelers while the remaining 3,027 were four-wheelers.

With this, the total number of e-vehicles, including three-wheelers, registered in Chandigarh has crossed the 20,000-mark. This was, however, not even 2% (precisely 1.4%) of over 14.27-lakh petrol, diesel and CNG vehicles registered in the Union Territory, which houses an estimated population of 13-lakh.