हम ई-मोबिलिटी में विश्व अग्रणी बनना चाहते हैं।

The 2019 Sankalp Patra states this ambition in seven words: "We want to become a world leader in e-mobility." The instrument was already running — FAME India, launched in April 2015 with ₹795 crore, and its second phase from April 2019 with an outlay eventually set at ₹11,500 crore, ending March 2024, which is also when this promise's term ended.

The CAG's performance audit of both phases was tabled on 12 August 2026 and covers March 2015 to March 2024 — almost exactly the life of the promise.

Adoption did happen: FAME's demand incentives sat behind a rapid expansion of electric two- and three-wheeler sales in India during those years, and the audit does not dispute the growth. What it examines is whether the state built what it said it would, and whether the money went where it was supposed to.

On charging, the answer is close to no. In Phase II, "out of a total of 2,877 charging stations (20 implementing agencies) approved by PISC for 'Cities', only four implementing agencies commissioned a total of 148 charging stations." The highways component never started: no funds were released, and the ministry "cancelled all 1,576 charging stations approved under this project". And the largest tranche of all — the 8,412 stations awarded to three oil marketing companies, whose forecourts were the obvious place to put them — produced nothing: "none of 8,412 charging stations awarded to three oil marketing companies was commissioned as on the stipulated completion date of 31 March 2024."

Where stations did exist, auditors went and looked at 104 of them between February and July 2023. What they found reads like a catalogue of a network not in service: "chargers not being powered, chargers removed from installation site, chargers not found installed at sites, non-awareness of the staff about charging procedure, non-functional Charging Management System, vandalism to occupy parking space designated for EV charging, damaged chargers, car chargers installed at parking designated for two-wheelers". One project alone left ₹12.66 crore infructuous, with 122 kW chargers and transformers never powered and solar plants never commissioned. Meanwhile a central management system for charging stations, already built by IIT Madras in 2017 on ministry money, "was not adopted/operationalised by the Ministry."

The demand incentive — the part that did move vehicles — had its own integrity problems. Localisation was the condition on which the subsidy rested, since the point was to build an Indian supply chain: "Five OEMs violated the localisation requirements stipulated under the Phased Manufacturing Programme despite which demand incentive of ₹467.96 crore was disbursed to them." Two later refunded ₹190.90 crore with interest; recovery from the other three was still in process. Separately, three manufacturers kept the onboard charger out of the ex-factory price of their electric two-wheelers, selling it as an accessory, so the vehicle stayed below the ₹1.5 lakh eligibility ceiling — and then refunded ₹296.52 crore to the customers who had paid for it.

Part of why such things were found late is that the system was not built to catch them. The incentive portal was created with "non-preparation of Detailed Project Report and non-signing of Service Level Agreement", leaving deliverables, timelines, testing protocols and data integrity requirements undefined, and it "did not have functionalities for end-to-end online processing of claims" or validation controls. For Phase I the audit could not even test admissibility: the ministry's files "did not contain any vehicle-wise details", so "Audit was unable to analyse or derive assurance as to the admissibility of the demand incentive reported in these files." Testing agencies had no deadline for issuing eligibility reports and took up to 497 days. And there was no whole-vehicle safety conformity-of-production test for electric vehicles in the motor vehicle rules until December 2022 — "more than eight years after notification of the FAME India scheme."

On electric buses, the one segment where the state was the buyer, delivery was closer: 5,195 deployed against a revised target of 6,862 as of December 2025. But the central server promised by December 2020 to monitor how those buses actually perform "had not been developed by the Ministry".

India did become one of the world's largest markets for electric two-wheelers in this period. World leadership in e-mobility, on the audited record of the scheme built to deliver it, is not what the charging network, the certification regime or the subsidy controls show. Our verdict is lacks context.