Electric Mobility Lag

Jammu and Kashmir's 27th rank among 36 States and UTs in the Electric Mobility Index 2025 ought to embarrass a region that, on paper, has every reason to lead rather than lag. An overall score of 31, well below the national average of 42, is a poor return for a UT whose glaciers, forests and lakes are precisely the kind of fragile ecology that electric mobility is meant to protect. The improvement of 11 points over last year, and gains recorded across all three assessed themes - Transport Electrification, Charging Infrastructure Readiness and EV Research & Innovation - will doubtless be cited by officials as evidence of progress. But progress measured from a low base is not the same as adequacy, and a close reading of the indicator-wise breakdown shows just how threadbare J&K's EV ecosystem remains.

Consider the specifics. Commercial EV registration has earned a full score of 100, and power availability likewise scores 100. These are, frankly, low-hanging fruit - outcomes that reflect existing grid capacity and a handful of e-buses and e-rickshaws rather than any deliberate policy push. By contrast, indicators show an outright zero: Government EV procurement, purchase incentives, transition initiatives, capital subsidies for charging, charging infrastructure incentives, building bylaws for EVs, and R&D initiatives. A UT cannot claim to be serious about electric mobility while five or six of the index's core policy levers sit untouched. This is not a mixed report card; it is a report card with subjects left unattempted.

The irony deepens when you consider what J&K is investing in at the same time. A new bus stand, upgraded railway stations and an express highway are all under construction, alongside other large infrastructure projects. Yet nowhere in this flurry of concrete and steel is there a visible, coordinated rollout of charging stations. Building an expressway without planning for the charging network that ought to run alongside it is planning with blinkers on - infrastructure conceived in silos rather than as an integrated transport strategy. Charging points are the single most basic precondition for any EV transition, and their absence, even as other big-ticket projects rise, suggests that electric mobility remains an afterthought rather than a design principle.

Local transportation compounds the problem. With no metro or light rail system anywhere in the Union Territory, residents and commuters are left entirely dependent on petrol and diesel vehicles for everyday movement. The Government's plan to double its electric bus fleet, adding 200 e-buses, is welcome, but buses alone cannot substitute for a mass transit backbone, nor do they address the overwhelming majority of trips made in private cars, two-wheelers and taxis. On that front, the picture is bleaker still: there is no incentive scheme to nudge private vehicle owners towards EVs, no discernible push to convert official Government vehicles to electric alternatives, and no special loan or subsidy scheme to encourage entrepreneurs to set up charging infrastructure.

Then there is the matter of the draft EV Policy itself, which has been in the making for more than three years and remains stuck in legal vetting. Its targets - 40 per cent of new four-wheeler registrations, 35 per cent of two-wheelers, 30 per cent of buses and 25 per cent of taxis and shared mobility within six years - are ambitious, even admirable on paper. The proposed Winter Validation Protocol, addressing sub-zero battery performance and cabin heating on routes such as Sonamarg and Zojila, is a genuinely thoughtful, terrain-specific provision rarely seen in EV policies drafted for the plains. But ambition on paper counts for nothing until it is notified, funded and implemented.

J&K's tourism numbers make the stakes unusually high. Nearly a crore of pilgrims visit Vaishno Devi annually, and Kashmir has recorded record tourist footfalls in recent years, all moving through some of the most ecologically sensitive terrain in the country. A region carrying that volume of seasonal traffic through fragile mountain corridors ought to have been an early and enthusiastic adopter of electric mobility, not a laggard ranked 27th out of 36. The raw material - an estimated 5.9 million tonnes of lithium reserves - and the political will expressed in ambitious targets both exist. Bits-and-pieces measures, however well-intentioned, will not move the needle. Only a fully implemented, adequately funded policy will.