Mumbai: Instead of 1,300 electric buses, BEST will receive only 685 buses this year, said minister of state for transport Madhuri Misal in the legislative council on Monday.She was responding to Shiv Sena (UBT) MLC Sunil Shinde, who demanded BEST purchase CNG buses given the rising number of accidents owing to electric vehicles.Misal said considering the population of Mumbai and passengers’ requirement, city needs at least 10,000 buses. For this, BEST had given work orders to various contractors for supply of 6,555 buses. However, as contractors were unable to deliver the buses on time, bus services could not be increased to the expected extent.As per the scrapping policy, the number of buses owned by BEST has come down as buses are scrapped every 15 years. Earlier, BEST had 1,882 owned buses, but currently, this number is down to 249. The remaining buses are on lease; currently there are 2,558 leased buses available, she said.Meanwhile, the govt had in Dec 2024 announced during the winter session that 1,300 electric buses (e-buses) will be added to the BEST fleet “soon”. The state government’s announcement had come at a time when the wet-lease model adopted by BEST had received much flak.Sources said BEST was set to receive Rs 498 crore from 15th Finance Commission to procure these electric buses.
