The United Kingdom is keen to deepen its involvement with Bengal through the creation of an electric vehicles (EV) skills roadmap and a wider knowledge exchange with experts of the country to help drive forward the EV policy in the state. Collaborations like these will help create the highly-skilled, dynamic transport workforce that the state requires in coming days.

Peter Cook, British deputy high commissioner to East and Northeast India said this while addressing in a workshop on ‘Building Electric Vehicles Charging Infrastructure in India’ organized by NPTC Group of Colleges, a Wales-UKbased specialised institute in training on electric mobility, and British Deputy High Commission in the city, and West Bengal State Council of Technical & Vocational Education on Tuesday.

“Skill development in the Electric Mobility space is an important component contributing to a net zero strategy and will help the creation of new green jobs and usher in EV investment,” Cook said.

Of the 36 states and union territories (UTs) in India, 26 have released EV policies over the past five years, 16 of them being released between 2020 and 2022.

As per Vahan Portal, the Bengal EV policy, which was launched in June in 2021, 16,202 EVs have been registered so far.

The state government has set a target of 10 lakh EVs and one lakh public and semi-public charging stations in five years.

“Bengal is the first state to launch e-vehicle courses for diploma engineers in 2021. Many from the 1st batch of students are currently engaged with TATA Motors. The move now is to skill manpower across levels of skills required for managing the transition to e-vehicles. The focus would be on fresh students as well as the existing workforce through up-skilling and reskilling. This workshop with the UK government to understand the scope and expanse of skill development is the first of its kind. Our state government may also explore working with the UK government on getting the knowledge and technology transfer for the creation of a center of excellence on e-vehicle and evehicle skilling hub,” said Anoop K Agrawal, principal secretary, technical education department, while addressing in the workshop.

S Suresh Kumar, additional chief secretary in charge of power department, said, “It is crucial that technical support is available for the EV charging infrastructure as well as for maintenance of EVs. Skill development is crucial for maintenance as well as for EV manufacturing.”