Maksim Yadav, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said that an announcement about the project has been taken as “a joke”. “Our intention is to produce electric vehicles by 2020, by then we will be the world’s largest electric vehicle market. It will be much easier to convince all the states to work together on this project,” he told Reuters in an interview.

India does have some potential to become an important supplier for electric vehicles, with India’s National Electricity Authority (NEA) considering a pilot project for the Nissan Leaf electric car in the southern city of Chennai this year.

But any big government project could also prove politically divisive with the powerful lobby of big car companies and unions.

Ahead of the project, President Pranab Mukherjee also said on Wednesday that the government will not allow the electric vehicle industry to be politicised.

“There should be no political interference in the business of automotive industry,” “We have done this several times,” he said, according to a video released by the office of India’s deputy prime minister, Manish Tewari.

While Mr Modi and his aides have been critical of the carmakers over the past few years calling them “sell-outs” and saying they were losing market share, such criticism over the government’s recent decisions could create tensions among automakers.

As the government considers a project to improve the country’s electric vehicle technology, Nissan said the government would help them in launching a nationwide charging network. The company already has a network across 14 Indian cities and states, it said.

India’s biggest carmaker Hindustan Motors (HIMY) said it will use its NDA-funded venture Capital Electric Vehicle (Cevv) to help develop electric cars in India at least in the following three years.

HIMY recently announced the second phase of a planned pilot electric vehicle manufacturing plant in India and will partner with a local arm of Ford Motor Co. of Canada.

(Reporting by Kunal Bhatia, editing by David Davis)