Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has announced that electric buses will be introduced across all 148 tehsils of Punjab, marking the most ambitious expansion of the province’s green public transport network to date and extending what has so far been a largely district-level initiative into the full breadth of Punjab’s administrative geography. The announcement was made in an official statement in which the chief minister said the electric bus network would be expanded to improve commuting facilities, modernise urban mobility infrastructure, and reduce environmental pollution across the province.
The announcement follows the provincial government’s recent approval of new electric buses for 10 additional districts, including Attock, Bhakkar, Hafizabad, Khanewal, Layyah, Sheikhupura, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Mandi Bahauddin, and Okara, which was granted during a meeting reviewing progress on mass transit projects in Faisalabad and Gujranwala, where the chief minister also directed authorities to speed up construction and rehabilitation work on metro bus stations and approved new station designs. Provincial Minister for Transport and Mass Transit Bilal Akbar Khan has confirmed that in the first batch, 500 electric buses have already been provided to 20 districts, with 100 more out of a second batch of 600 buses due to arrive shortly and the remainder currently in production. Approval for an additional 1,500 buses for the following year has also been granted, signalling that the rollout is structured as a multi-year programme rather than a single procurement exercise.
The tehsil-level expansion addresses a critical gap in Punjab’s transport development, where electric bus services have historically been concentrated in major urban centres while smaller towns and rural areas have been left dependent on older, more polluting forms of road transport. Punjab’s expansion to tehsils is part of a broader plan to modernise its public transport network while emphasising low-emission, environmentally sustainable mobility, with the provincial government also having introduced digital cashless payment systems for commuters that allow payment through cards, mobile applications, or QR codes. The electric bus announcement sits alongside several complementary green transport initiatives underway in Punjab, including the province’s e-taxi scheme under the CM Transport Vision 2030 framework, the Pink Bus Service for women, and emission testing requirements for vehicles, collectively forming what the chief minister has described as an effort to establish a comprehensive e-mobility ecosystem that positions Punjab as a model for sustainable transport development across Pakistan.
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