The Punjab government has decided to stop purchasing new petrol- and diesel-powered official vehicles and has begun planning a phased shift of its government fleet to electric vehicles (EVs). The initiative aims to reduce air pollution, promote cleaner transportation, and lower reliance on petroleum products. Provincial Minister for Transport and Mass Transit Bilal Akbar Khan will oversee the transition, and the Transport Department will compile a database of the vehicles used by government officials to guide the process. The database is a necessary first step because the province needs to know how many vehicles are in use, who uses them, and which can be replaced first before it can set a realistic schedule for the shift.
Charging infrastructure is part of the plan. Planning work for 236 EV charging points in Lahore has been completed, and the government is considering subsidies to support the infrastructure. It will also prepare a special incentive package to encourage private investors to install charging points. The proposed network is expected to encourage EV adoption in Lahore and to create hundreds of jobs as the infrastructure develops. The government has not said when the charging points will be installed, who will operate them, how large the subsidies will be, or how much the programme will cost, so the plan is still at the stage of preparation and not rollout.
The decision follows an announcement made in January 2026, when the Punjab government said that provincial departments would be allowed to purchase only electric or hybrid vehicles, with vehicles used for field duties exempted. The same decision made approval of new petrol pumps conditional on installing EV charging units, and officials said at the time that 170 pumps in 31 cities had received no-objection certificates through the e-Biz portal on that condition. Dawn reported then that the Services and General Administration Department had not issued a notification on the change, and an official said the policy would take effect once the chief minister formally approved it. The latest plan indicates that the government has moved from the announcement to working out how the shift will be carried out.
The scale of the challenge is clear from the numbers. The Express Tribune reported in February, citing the Excise and Taxation Department, that more than 15,000 EVs were registered in Punjab, most of them electric scooters and motorcycles, with only about 1,500 electric cars. Officials told the newspaper that converting the whole official fleet would take time and money, that no dedicated budget had been allocated for a complete transition, and that the shift would be gradual, starting with office-use vehicles, government vehicles in urban areas, and selected fleets of the police, municipal services, and other civil departments. A small official fleet will not change air quality in a province with millions of combustion vehicles on the road, which is why the charging network and private-sector incentives in the new plan may matter as much as the government’s own purchases.
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