Bengal to switch to lease model for procuring electric buses

The West Bengal government has decided to switch to "lease model" for procuring new electric buses to overcome high initial capital expenditure, a senior official of the state Transport department said.

Under leasing or an opex model the bus would be operated by the state Transport department and ticketing responsibility will stay with them and would pay the rental based on per kilometre basis through a competitive tendering basis, the official said.

"We will now procure 50 new electric buses on dry lease. This is an opex model compared to previous acquisitions on a capex model," Transport Secretary N S Nigam told PTI.

He said leasing will be based on per kilometre basis and responsibility of ticketing will lie with the department.

Electricity cost will be borne by the state government and for that government was planning more charging stations.

The state government will also bring tariff reforms for the charging stations as electricity tariff for charging electric ...