There has been substantial growth in number of electric vehicle charging stations in major citiesNew Delhi: Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations have expanded by two-and-a-half times across nine major cities, including the metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai in the last four months, power ministry has said.The other cities where electric vehicle charging infrastructure has come up are Pune, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Surat.

The power ministry further informed that additional 678 public EV charging stations were installed between October 2021 and January 2022 in these nine cities.

About 940 of India's 1,640 public EV chargers are located in these cities.The government has increased its focus initially on the nine mega cities with population of over 4 million.The ministry had recently issued the revised consolidated guidelines for EV charging infrastructure on January 14, 2022.With the considerable expansion in the public EV charging infrastructure, the electric vehicles have started penetrating the Indian market, the power ministry statement added.The government has made efforts to enhance public charging infrastructure by involving private and public agencies like Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), Power Grid Corporation Limited and National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC), official sources said.Many private organisations have also come forward to install EV charging stations to develop convenient charging network grid to gain consumers' confidence, they added.Oil marketing companies have announced setting up of 22,000 EV charging stations in prominent cities and on national highways across the country.Out of 22,000 EV charging stations, 10,000 will be installed by Indian Oil Corporation, 7,000 will be installed by Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited and the remaining stations totalling 5,000 will be installed by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited.Indian Oil has already installed 439 EV charging stations and plans to install another 2,000 charging stations over the next year.

BPCL has installed 52 charging stations, while HPCL has installed 382 charging stations.The department of heavy industry has recently sanctioned 1,576 public charging stations for 25 highways and expressways which shall be located within every 25 km of range on both sides of these highways.