Maharashtra Cooperative Housing Societies and Resident Welfare Associations (RWA) have issued a directive to grant no objection certificates (NOCs) to Electric Vehicle (EV) owners for installing EV charging points on society premises within seven days of the date of application.
The directive by the registrar of cooperative housing societies comes in the wake of several EV owners complaining that they failed to get permission from the housing societies for installing charging points.
The Maharashtra government launched the Maharashtra State Electric Vehicle Policy 2021 in June 2021.
This policy addresses the concerns of various stakeholders in the EV ecosystem by outlining the infrastructure development, demand and supply-side financial and non-financial incentives to tackle the high upfront cost to facilitate a higher EV adoption rate and to increase production capacity.
The policy also has a provision for NOCs issued by a housing society/RWA to an individual EV owner for installing a private EV charger.
A separate connection for charging EVs is aimed at enhancing the EV adoption rate in Mumbai, where private vehicles rely on home chargers for up to 80% of their needs.
The directive issued reads: “As the installation of an EV charging station is a de-licensed activity, any individual who wishes to install an EV charger is free to do so. A NOC (template provided in Annexure-II) should be granted by the housing society/RWA to any EV owner that wishes to set up a charging point within the building premises. The housing society/RWA should grant NOC to the EV owner within seven days from the date of application (template provided in Annexure-I).”
According to guidelines issued by the Maharashtra government, a minimum of 5 meters distance should be maintained between a vehicle and the charging point for EVs.
All the sockets for the EV charging point should be installed within a height of 800 millimeters above the highest flood level. The charging points can only be installed away from the children’s play areas.
In Maharashtra, a total of 37,777 EVs have been registered between April 2017 and March 2022. In 2021-22 alone, more than 18,000 EVs were registered, according to the data provided in the Maharashtra Economic Survey of 2021-22.
Developers have welcomed the move by the Maharashtra government to ease the application process for developing EV infrastructure.
Keval Valambhia, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the local chapter of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India, said: “It is good that EV owners will get approvals from housing societies on time to install EV car chargers. We developers are also trying our best to accommodate EV charging points installed in all possible new residential and commercial projects on a need and viability basis. This is to support the government’s target towards electrification of vehicles plying on roads.”
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