Delhi opens applications for 1,300 pink e-autos for women, transgender drivers

Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Monday, 12 October 2026, launched an online application portal for the DURGA e-auto scheme at the Delhi Secretariat, opening the first phase of a plan to hand 1,300 pink electric autorickshaws to women and transgender persons who want to earn a living as drivers. Transport Minister Pankaj Kumar Singh and senior officials attended the launch. The Delhi Cabinet had cleared the scheme in September, and the portal is the step that lets eligible applicants actually apply.

Most schemes for new entrepreneurs focus on start-ups with an idea and a pitch deck. DURGA is aimed at a different kind of founder: a woman or transgender person who wants to run a one-vehicle transport business and needs a route into a trade that has been overwhelmingly male. The name is built from the words driving, upliftment and rozgar, the Hindi word for employment, which sums up the government's stated purpose of linking clean transport with self-employment.

For a driver, owning the autorickshaw means the daily income depends on the hours driven and the routes chosen, not on a vehicle owner taking a share. For a woman who already holds a driving licence, a scheme that eases access to an electric vehicle addresses a key barrier, which is getting hold of a vehicle at all. The government has said beneficiaries can also seek purchase incentives under the Delhi EV Policy-2026, so the scheme sits alongside the city's wider push to move commercial vehicles to electric power.

The design choices matter for anyone thinking of applying. The district caps spread the vehicles across the city rather than letting one area take most of them. The weekly scrutiny and a lottery for oversubscribed districts are meant to make selection transparent. The three-year lock-in tells applicants that the vehicle is meant for their own livelihood: it cannot simply be sold or handed on soon after it is received.

For transgender persons, a dedicated quota of 130 vehicles is a direct, if small, opening into paid work with a recognisable public identity.

Short-term: Applications open now through the portal, and the first allotments will follow district-level checks and, where needed, a draw of lots. Selected applicants are to receive letters of intent, identity cards, DURGA jackets and caps.

Long-term: If the first phase works, it could bring more than a thousand new women and transgender drivers onto Delhi's roads, add to the city's electric commercial fleet, and give the government a model it could expand in later phases.

Who is affected: Women and transgender residents of Delhi with a driving licence and PSV badge and a family income within the limit; passengers, especially women, who may feel safer with women drivers; and auto unions and dealers in the city.

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