This Wednesday, the Centre has announced 10,000 new electric buses across 100 cities as part of the PM e-bus Seva Yojna.
Center Announces 10k New E-bus Seva Yojna Across 100 Cities
The Union I&B minister, Anurag Thakur said the PM e-bus seva has been approved by the cabinet to bolster green mobility, at a briefing after the Union cabinet meeting.
Further, he informed that the PM e-bus Seva Yojna has been allocated Rs 57,613 cores.
Highlights From Cabinet Meeting
Let’s go through the highlights of these announcements made during the Centre’s cabinet briefing.
- To start with, Thakur said that 100 cities will be chosen out of 169 cities, on a challenge method, on PM e-bus Seva initiative.
- Out of Rs 57,613 crores, Rs 20,000 crores will be provided by the Central government.
- This scheme will cover cities with 3 lakhs and above population.
- As part of this scheme, city bus operations with 10,000 e-buses on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model will be done and this scheme will support bus operations for 10 years.
- Besides this, the cabinet has also approved the Vishwakarma Yojana scheme, according to the Union railways, communications, electronics and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
- The government will promote traditional skills including pottery, blacksmithing, construction, tailoring, and boat-building which have been transferred through the previous generations, as per the PM Vishwakarma scheme.
- This scheme is expected to benefit 30 lakh craftsmen families, as the Rs 13,000 crore scheme will enable craftsmen to get subsidized loans up to Rs 2 lakh.
- There are two types of skill program under the PM Vishwakarma scheme and a stipend of Rs 500 will be given to those who are taking benefit of the scheme and to buy modern tools, Rs. 15,000 in mode of support will be given.
- In addition to that, loans up to Rs. 1,00,000 to the beneficiaries of the Vishwakarma scheme.
- Apart from this the Cabinet approved the extension of the Digital India program with an outlay of Rs 14,903 crores, informed Vaishnaw.
- He said that ‘Bhashini’, the national digital public platform for universal language translation will also be introduced under the Digital India program.
- In addition to this, the Centre also decided to add nine more supercomputers to the already existing 18 systems deployed in the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), Vaishnaw added.
- He said “The government, under PM Modi, is extensively focusing on the development of the Railways,”as The Union Cabinet has approved seven multi-tracking projects of Indian Railways with an outlay of Rs. 32,500 crore.
- The Centre also approved extension of DigiLocker to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Presently, it is available only for individuals, and it now has more than 40 crore subscribers. Soon, a new extension of DigiLocker will be launched for MSMEs.
