By Shri Venkatesh, Founding Partner, SKV Law Offices; and Punyam Bhutani, Senior Associate, SKV Law Offices
The Draft Delhi Electric Vehicle (EV) Policy 2026–2030 represents the Government of National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi’s continuing effort to address the capital’s air quality crisis through a structured clean mobility framework. It builds on the Delhi EV Policy 2020, but moves well beyond it in scope, introducing purchase incentives, exemptions from road tax and registration fees, charging and battery swapping infrastructure, battery recycling measures, digital administration, and, notably, phased electrification mandates across key vehicle segments. What distinguishes the 2026–2030 iteration from its predecessor is its attempt to treat electric mobility as an ecosystem rather than a standalone vehicle-purchase programme.
The draft is anchored in the recognition that vehicular emissions remain a material contributor to poor air quality in Delhi. Drawing on the latest report of the Commission for Air Quality Management, it records that vehicular emissions account for a significant share of pollution in the NCT, particularly during winter. Two-wheelers dominate Delhi’s vehicle stock, while three-wheelers, commercial cars and N1 goods vehicles represent high-utilisation segments whose electrification is central to any sustained improvement in air quality.
Constitutional framing and policy objectives
The draft expressly invokes Article 21 of the constitution, which it associates with the right to clean air and a pollution-free environment, and draws on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in M.C. Mehta vs Union of India & Ors. It further grounds itself in the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. By placing the policy within a constitutional and statutory lineage, the drafters appear to anticipate potential legal challenges to the more intrusive mandates that follow, particularly those affecting livelihood-dependent vehicle categories.
The stated objectives are familiar but coherently articulated: accelerating EV adoption across major vehicle segments, supporting public and private charging infrastructure, enabling battery recycling and related services, improving air quality, and ensuring fiscal efficiency and transparent implementation. Taken together, they indicate an attempt to balance environmental imperatives with an administrable implementation structure, though, as discussed below, the balance is weighted more heavily toward environmental goals rather than industry protection.
Incentives, infrastructure and OEM obligations
At the consumer-facing end, the draft offers year-wise purchase incentives for electric two-wheelers, electric three-wheelers auto-rickshaws, and electric four-wheeler goods vehicles in the N1 category. For two-wheelers, the incentive is linked to battery capacity and is subject to both a price cap and a maximum incentive. For three-wheelers and N1 goods vehicles, it is structured as a fixed amount that declines over successive years from the date of notification. The eligibility of EV models is tied to the government’s PM E-DRIVE scheme and its successors, which is sensible from an alignment standpoint but it concentrates approval power at the central level.
Scrapping incentives for electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers, cars and N1 goods carriers are made available subject to the purchase of a new EV within six months of obtaining a certificate of deposit from an authorised scrapping facility, and are linked to the scrapping of older Delhi-registered BS-IV and below vehicles. Exemptions on road tax and registration fees are extended to EVs registered in Delhi during the policy period, with differentiated treatment for electric cars based on ex-showroom price as well as for strong hybrid EVs. The architecture is coherent: direct incentives at the top, scrapping-linked support to accelerate the replacement of legacy stock, and registration-level relief to narrow the cost differential with ICE vehicles.
On infrastructure, the policy designates Delhi Transco Limited as the nodal agency for the planning, coordination and implementation of public EV charging and battery swapping infrastructure. DTL is tasked with demand aggregation, location and load identification, and system-level planning for siting, grid readiness and phased deployment. It is further required to develop and periodically update standard operating procedures, covering technical standards, approvals, timelines, service level benchmarks, and monitoring mechanisms. It will also operate a dedicated digital portal for end-to-end management of charging and swapping infrastructure. A high-powered committee under the chairpersonship of chief secretary, Government of NCT of Delhi, and a single-window clearance mechanism for charge point and battery swapping operators complete the institutional design.
Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are assigned responsibilities that go beyond vehicle supply. All OEMs operating in Delhi are required to ensure the deployment of at least one public EV charging station per dealer, with minimum charging points prescribed for two-, three- and four-wheelers. The policy further states that OEMs will aim to stabilise EV costs to improve affordability for Delhi residents. The latter is aspirational and unlikely to be enforceable in its current form, but the former represents a concrete shift of the infrastructure burden onto manufacturers, a design choice that will likely attract industry representations during the consultation window.
On the ecosystem side, the Environment Department is tasked with ensuring strict compliance OEMs and other obligated entities with the Battery Waste Management Rules, 2022, including extended producer responsibility, reporting and the environmentally responsible management of waste batteries. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee is responsible for facilitating the development of battery collection centres across Delhi under a public-private partnership model, as well as notifying standard operating procedures for the safe collection, storage, transportation and transfer of waste batteries to authorised recyclers or producer responsibility organisations.
Phased electrification and institutional governance
The most consequential, and legally most contestable, provisions are the phased electrification mandates. From January 1, 2027, only electric three-wheelers (L5) will be permitted for new registration in Delhi; and from April 1, 2028, the same requirement will apply to two-wheelers. Minimum electrification targets are prescribed for school buses, with increasing electric share requirements up to 31 March 2030. For fleet aggregators and delivery service providers, no conventional ICE vehicles running purely on petrol or diesel may be inducted into the existing fleet of specified categories from January 1, 2026, though BS-VI two-wheelers may continue to be inducted until December 31, 2026. Government fleets, new intra-state buses and new N1 trucks procured, leased or hired by the Government of NCT departments and public bodies, are required to be electric, subject to limited exceptions.
The institutional architecture supporting these mandates is comparatively robust. Applications, approvals, verifications, disbursements, reporting and grievance redressal are intended to be fully paperless through digital systems. The transport department is the nodal agency for implementation, with an EV cell under a special or additional or joint commissioner supported by a dedicated project management consultant. Responsibilities are separately allocated to DTL through the power department, the environment department, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, urban local bodies and land-owning agencies, the education department and district magistrates through the revenue department. The draft also provides for a dedicated EV fund under the transport department, drawing financing from budgetary allocations, central and state schemes, the Air Ambience Fund, the Environment Compensation Charge, PM E-DRIVE, cess, taxes and other approved sources.
Legal questions and the road ahead
Four sets of questions are likely to dominate the consultation process and, if the draft is notified substantially as proposed, any subsequent litigation.
First, the phased bans on new ICE two-wheeler and three-wheeler registrations will be tested for reasonableness under Articles 14 and 19(1)(g) of the constitution. While the Supreme Court’s environmental jurisprudence, beginning with M.C. Mehta, provides significant headroom for pollution control measures, the timelines here are aggressive. Whether charging and swapping infrastructure will in fact be in place for three-wheelers by 2027 and two-wheelers by 2028, will be central to any reasonableness assessment.
Second, the obligations imposed on OEMs, particularly the requirement to establish dealer-level charging stations and stabilise prices, raise questions about the source and scope of state-level authority over manufacturers who are otherwise regulated under the central legislation.
Third, the fleet aggregator and delivery service provider obligations sit at the intersection of the Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines, state excise and labour regulation, and the draft policy itself. Operators with pan-India fleets will need to assess how Delhi-specific induction restrictions interact with their broader operational commitments and existing contractual arrangements.
Fourth, on a comparative perspective, the draft is meaningfully more ambitious than the Delhi EV Policy 2020 that it is set to replace. The 2020 policy was built primarily on financial incentives and was extended multiple times pending the formulation of a successor. The 2026–2030 draft shifts the centre of gravity from incentives alone to mandates, institutional design and battery lifecycle governance.
Taken as a whole, the Draft Delhi Electric Vehicle Policy 2026–2030 is a serious document. It approaches EV adoption as part of a regulatory and administrative ecosystem involving infrastructure, waste management, inter-departmental coordination and dedicated funding support. Its distinctive contribution lies in its emphasis on institutional design and battery lifecycle management, and its willingness to impose hard segment-specific deadlines rather than rely solely on incentives. Whether it succeeds will depend less on the quality of the drafting and more on three practical variables: whether DTL can deliver charging infrastructure at the pace the mandates require, whether the high-powered committee and single-window clearance actually compress approval timelines, and whether the industry and consumer response to the phased bans produces acceptance or litigation. For stakeholders across the EV value chain, the consultation window is the moment to shape those outcomes. For the government, it is the last opportunity to close the gap between ambition and enforceability before the policy is tested on field and, in all likelihood, before the courts.
