Bharat Charging Standard Rolls Out to 12 New Cities: Full List of Fast Charger Locations

The Bureau of Indian Standards' unified Bharat charging standard, which finally consolidated the patchwork of CCS2, CHAdeMO and Indian-DC connectors into one specification, has just completed its Phase 2 rollout. As of 28 April 2026, 387 new chargers across 12 cities are now live and discoverable on the official Charge India app.

The 12 new cities (and station counts)

1. Lucknow: 38 new fast chargers, mostly along NH-27 and inside city corp limits. Largest single station at Charbagh interchange (8 stalls).
2. Indore: 32 chargers, with a major hub at MR-10 (4 stalls).
3. Bhopal: 24 chargers along NH-46 and city.
4. Patna: 22 chargers, including a hub at Patna railway station and 6 stations along NH-22.
5. Coimbatore: 36 chargers, useful corridor coverage between Bengaluru-Coimbatore-Kochi.
6. Trivandrum: 28 chargers including 3 highway stations on NH-66 north of the city.
7. Jaipur: 41 chargers, biggest single deployment in this phase. Strong corridor coverage on NH-48 toward Ajmer and NH-21 toward Delhi.
8. Vadodara: 30 chargers along NH-48 and city corp.
9. Surat: 26 chargers.
10. Kanpur: 28 chargers.
11. Chandigarh-Mohali-Panchkula: 38 chargers (treated as a single tri-city zone).
12. Visakhapatnam: 44 chargers including 12 along the new East Coast Road extension toward Bhubaneswar.

Total: 387 chargers across the 12 cities, all 100 kW or higher, all using the unified Bharat-DC connector. CCS2 backward compatibility is maintained via adapter — every station has at least one CCS2 cable available alongside the Bharat-DC plug.

Charger speeds and pricing

The base Bharat-DC spec is 60 kW. Most new installations are 100 kW or 120 kW. A handful of highway hubs (Jaipur NH-48, Coimbatore NH-544) have 240 kW chargers but only a few EVs in India today can actually use that — the Hyundai Ioniq 5, BYD Atto 3, and the upcoming MG Cyberster being the main beneficiaries.

Pricing is centrally regulated. Phase 2 stations charge ₹18 per kWh flat, no idle fees in the first 60 minutes after the session ends, no access fees. This is meaningfully cheaper than Tata Power EZ Charge (₹22-26/kWh) or Statiq's premium tier (₹24/kWh). Expect the established networks to drop their pricing within the next quarter to compete.

How to find them and check live status

The official Charge India app is the only directory that shows live status across all networks. Earlier you needed Tata Power's app for Tata stations, ChargeZone's for theirs, Statiq's for theirs — a real mess on inter-city drives. Charge India aggregates all of them now.

The app shows:

• Number of stalls available right now (live, updated every 30 seconds)
• Charger speed per stall
• Connector type (Bharat-DC / CCS2 / Type 2 AC)
• Last-checked status (helps you avoid driving 40 km to a known-broken station)
• User-reported issues (this is genuinely useful — drivers flag broken stations and you see those flags before you commit)

Google Maps integration is also live now. If you ask Maps for "EV charger near me" you'll get Bharat charging results showing live availability inline. This was rolled out quietly in late March and is the single best UX improvement to EV charging in India this year.

What this means for inter-city driving

If you wanted to drive an EV from Mumbai to Goa, Mumbai to Bengaluru, or Delhi to Jaipur in 2024, you were planning around 3-4 charging stops with backup options. Today, post-Phase 2:

• Mumbai-Goa: 7 fast charger options on NH-66, no station more than 60 km from the next.
• Delhi-Jaipur: 11 options, the longest gap is 48 km between Behror and Shahpura.
• Bengaluru-Hyderabad: still the weakest corridor with only 4 reliable options on NH-44, but Phase 3 (announced for Q3 2026) is supposed to add 6 more.

For most metro-to-metro drives in 2026, you can plan a trip with one stop, charge for 25-35 minutes while you eat lunch, and not think about range again. That's the threshold at which EVs stop being a "second car for city" purchase and become a "first car that can do everything" purchase. India crossed it some time in early 2026, quietly, while everyone was still arguing about it on Twitter.