Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka top NITI Aayog’s 2025 index for states’ electric mobility transition

Delhi topped NITI Aayog’s India Electric Mobility Index (IEMI) 2025, published on Wednesday, followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka as top performers in the overall survey, which evaluates transport electrification progress, charging infrastructure readiness, and research and development in the electric vehicle (EV) sector.

Delhi ranked highest overall with 84 points, followed by Maharashtra (78) and Karnataka (73), the IEMI 2025 showed.

The report, first published last year after analyzing the progress made by states and union territories in 2024, also underscored the need for state-level EV policies to bolster the mobility transition in the world’s third-largest automobile market by sales.

Comparing 2025 performance with 2024 shows that the top-performing states and Union territories—Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Chandigarh—maintained their leading positions. The federal policy think tank also noted that the median score across states and Union territories rose to 40 in 2025 from 36 in 2024, with the top score increasing from 77 to 84 over the same period.

Category leaders

According to the IEMI 2025 report, Delhi (77) topped transport electrification progress, closely followed by Chandigarh (75) and Maharashtra (68). Meanwhile, Karnataka (97) led charging infrastructure readiness, followed closely by Maharashtra (91) and Haryana (91).

The charging infrastructure readiness category assessed the charger-to-vehicle ratio in each territory, as well as enablers such as subsidies provided, and the amount of renewable energy used to generate power in the region.

Maharashtra (85), Karnataka (82), and Tamil Nadu (77) were the top performers in the EV research and innovation category, which assessed the number of EV startups in the territory, along with intellectual property generation in this Clean-mobility domain.

During the launch of IEMI 2025, Rajiv Gauba, full-time member of NITI Aayog, said the West Asia crisis could prove a major inflection point for electric mobility, much like the oil crises of the 1970s accelerated the global push towards greater fuel efficiency, according to a NITI Aayog statement on Wednesday.

Gauba also said electric mobility is a crucial tool for India to reduce its dependence on imported crude oil. India imports 89% of its annual crude oil demand from various countries.

Policy push and subsidies

The Union government began actively supporting electric mobility with two Faster Adoption & Manufacturing of Electric vehicles (FAME) schemes from FY15-24 for five years each, followed by the ₹11,900-crore PM E-Drive scheme, which subsidises the cost of buying EVs in various segments such as two-wheelers, three-wheelers, buses, trucks, and ambulances.

These demand-side incentives are also supported by supply-side benefits for automakers, such as the ₹25,938-crore production-linked incentive scheme for automobiles and auto parts (PLI auto), which received the Union cabinet’s approval in 2021, and is slated to continue disbursals to automakers until FY29.

Mint reported previously that NITI Aayog is set to assess the impact of past and existing state-level EV policies and recommend directions for the next generation of these policies, which provide a wide range of enablers to increase the adoption of cleaner mobility, including EV purchase subsidies to consumers as well as manufacturing incentives.

This comes against the backdrop of rising EV adoption, with India—the world’s third-largest automobile market—recording 2.45 million EV sales in FY26, up 25% from the previous fiscal year.

State policies

While new EV policies for Gujarat, West Bengal and Goa are expected shortly, the EV policies of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Punjab, and Haryana are slated to end in 2027. Meanwhile, the EV policies of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Kerala are set to end in 2030.

Delhi’s EV Policy 2.0, in a first, introduced a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles in certain segments, allowing only electric two-wheelers to be registered in the national capital starting April 2028, and only electric three-wheelers from January 2027. The new policy was implemented in July 2026, following backlash from automakers to electrification mandates during consultations.

Experts said that after Delhi’s electrification mandates, state-level EV policies are increasingly becoming important levers of boosting adoption.

“After the Delhi EV Policy, conversations have gathered pace around how states can use all available levers to accelerate EV adoption. Alongside CAFE norms, state EV policies remain one of the most important tools available to policymakers to drive EV sales. While supply-side regulations, such as mandates to phase out ICE vehicles, can be an effective way to accelerate EV adoption, it is increasingly clear that efforts to phase out ICE vehicles are likely to come through state-level policies rather than a single national policy,” said Amit Bhatt, India managing director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a global think tank.

The Union government’s corporate average fuel efficiency (CAFE) norms set annual fleet emission ceilings for automakers, while incentivizing cleaner alternatives to internal combustion engines—including EVs, hybrids, and flex-fuel vehicles.

Expanding mandates across segments

The government is also working on similar regulations for trucks as well as two-wheelers, with the Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the union power ministry holding discussions with the industry, Mint reported earlier.

Last August, NITI Aayog launched the IEMI 2024 along with a research report on India’s electric mobility pivot, terming it a $200 billion opportunity, and recommending that EV policies move from incentives to mandates and that CAFE regimes cover all vehicle segments.

Speaking at the annual convention of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) In late August 2026, Tarun Kapoor, advisor to the prime minister, noted that sales restrictions on conventional fuel two-wheelers have already begun in Delhi, with other regions likely to follow.

“In two-wheelers, things are going fine, though two-wheeler manufacturers keep telling us that they don’t make much money in electric. They still want to sell more conventional vehicles, probably because they are more profitable. But then how to make profit is up to you. You have to think about that. But this transition is going to happen. There are restrictions which will keep coming in. In Delhi and this region, restrictions have already started coming in. In other areas also they may start kicking in. So therefore we have to prepare for that,” he said.