Mumbai’s EV Push Stalls At Home As Housing Societies Resist Charging Setups Despite Policy Support
On one hand the ministry of power’s guidelines allow people to charge their EVs at their residence, housing societies are against allowing all the residents to take separate connections for charging their vehicles.
File/ Representative image
While the Maharashtra government has announced various subsidies and attractive benefits to electric vehicle (EV) buyers through the recent EV Policy 2025, the users are struggling with charging their cars in their housing societies. On one hand the ministry of power’s guidelines allow people to charge their EVs at their residence, housing societies are against allowing all the residents to take separate connections for charging their vehicles.
Legal Battle for a Charging Point Reaches High Court
In FY 2024-25, Maharashtra ranked second in the country in terms of selling EVs, with 2.46 lakh vehicles sold in a year which marked a 12.52% rise. To boost the demand of electric mobility, the state government approved its new EV police 2025 in May. It offers incentives up to Rs2 lakh on EV four-wheelers, exemption in road tax and registration fee and toll-free travel on select expressways. To solve the issues of parking, the policy mandates at least one community charging station in every new residential building. However, EV users in Mumbai are struggling with getting their vehicles charged at their residence due to steep challenges in installing chargers in their housing societies.
In January 2022, the union ministry of power revised its guidelines to enable faster adoption of EVs in India, by ensuring safe, reliable, accessible, and affordable charging infrastructure. The guidelines allows owners to charge their EV at their residence or office using the existing electric connection. However, EV users are required to receive a no-objection certificate from their housing society to install a new electric connection for the charging station, where all the problems start.
Legal Battle for a Charging Point Reaches High Court
Malabar hill resident Amit Dholakia had moved the Bombay High Court in February this year after his housing society rejected his application to obtain an NOC from his society for a charging station in his garage. While the society had rejected the application saying that it had no policy to allow individual members to install charging infrastructure for their EVs, the HC directed the registrar of cooperative societies to finalise draft rules for installation of charging stations in cooperative societies for EVs.
While the additional registrar of cooperative societies, in 2022, had directed housing societies to issue NOCs to EV owners within seven days of application, the housing societies face various limitations related to the necessary infrastructure required to allow new connections for charging stations and to ensure safety of other vehicles in case of a fire incident.
Residents Voice Struggles on Social Media
While this issue reached the doors of HC, multiple such issues remain restricted to people sharing their experiences online. EV users on social media frequently post about delays in obtaining NOC from their housing society or rejection of their applications citing fire safety concerns, lack of separate routing, or absence of formal policies, offering low‑capacity common chargers that are slow, paid, and inconvenient.
However, most of the housing societies are left in a pickle as they see risks in providing an NOC for EV charging stations in basement parkings. Chandivali’s Synchronicity CHS had recently issued a circular for their residents reflecting that they allowed charging points in their basement parking on revocable basis but were sceptical of allowing multiple charging points creating a clutter of wires as it seemed unsafe in a basement with housing 400 cars.
Space Crunch in South Mumbai Adds to Challenge
Mandeep Singh Makkar, chairman of Synchronicity CHS, said, “Electric vehicles are the future and we do support the same. However, making provisions for 400 EV points in the society’s basements is not possible and also poses a serious fire hazard. Presently our society's electrical infrastructure is not future ready and not designed to provide multiple electric vehicle charging points.”
The society is now planning to install an EV zone with four community charging points that shall be open to the sky and isolated from car parkings, children’s play areas and comply with BMC’s fire guidelines.
Cost of New Connections Deters Residents
Dr. Padmakar Nandekar, secretary of Jal Kiran society in Cuffe Parade said that they allow residents to install charging points at their parking slots in the open parkings but the residents are avoiding it citing higher costs of new connections. “We were also in discussions with two EV charging station companies to install two community charging stations in the society. However, they were demanding two parking spaces to be reserved for that. In a South Mumbai society built on leased collector’s land, we are already short of parking spaces and nobody would give up their space. Therefore, our residents have been charging their vehicles at community stations at petrol pumps.”
RECENT STORIES
-
-
-
-
-