Maharashtra Reinstates Olectra Electric Bus Order Under New Delivery Schedule

The Maharashtra government has decided to reinstate its order of 5,150 electric buses from Olectra Greentech Ltd., albeit under a new delivery schedule.

The decision to revive the order was taken during a meeting between Olectra Greentech’s officials and Maharashtra’s Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik at the Mantralaya on Friday.

“The buses have to be delivered as per the new schedule to ensure that passengers receive the facilities promised,” Sarnaik had said. “We had earlier decided to terminate the contract since the consortium failed to supply the electric buses on time.”

According to the new delivery schedule, Olectra Greentech has to deliver to Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation 620 electric buses in 2025, 2,100 units in 2026, and the rest, 2,210 units, in 2027.

MSRTC had in July 2023 signed a letter of intent with Olectra Greentech and Evey Trans Pvt. Ltd. for procuring 5,150 electric buses at a total cost of Rs 10,000 crore, according to an exchange filing on 7 July 2023. These were to be delivered over a period of 24 months, but the MSRTC has received only 220 electric buses so far.

That prompted Sarnaik to cancel the order.

“We had an agreement with Olectra from January 2024, under which they were supposed to deliver more than 2,000 buses by now,” Sarnaik had told NDTV Profit on 27 May. “We had planned our operations accordingly to serve the people. But they have only delivered 220 buses so far.”

The MSRTC had expected at least 1,200 buses by May, but that too didn’t happen.

“How long are we supposed to wait? We have sought legal advice to move ahead with contract cancellation,” Sarnaik had said then. “It’s not that their buses are faulty. We just need the buses to serve people. We can’t wait indefinitely for a contractor.”

To be sure, Olectra Greentech’s order book has come under pressure of late.

On Saturday, Telangana scrapped its intercity order with the company after only 10 out of a total 50 electric buses were delivered. TSRTC had in March 2023 placed an order with Olectra Greentech for 500 intracity and 50 intercity electric buses worth Rs 1,000 crore. Those were to be delivered within 16 months and maintained by Olectra itself. The intercity order was to be on a gross cost contract/OPEX model basis for a period of 10 years.

While the intercity order is now withdrawn, there was no immediate clarity on how many of the 500 intracity electric buses have been delivered to TSRTC so far.

The Hyderabad-based bus maker, at present, has an order book that’s double the size of its production capacity. Still, it’s confident of meeting demand.

“Except for the reduction in the existing order book by 40 buses, there is no material adverse impact on the company since the company is having a huge order book,” Olectra said in an exchange filing on 31 May.

Over the weekend, NDTV Profit tried to reach out to Olectra Greentech for a comment on its order book. CEO KV Pradeep did not respond to phone calls or texts over WhatsApp.