Can 2 time zones save India's energy?

The Government has initiated a study to assess the feasibility of having two different time zones in the country. The move follows Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu’s demand for a separate time zone for India’s North-east region. Department of the Science and Technology Secretary Asuthosh Sharma said that the study will try to find out how much energy can be saved if there are two different time zones.

“The study will assess the overall impact of such move and will also focus on the transportation system. One can actually save energy because the sunrise and sunset timings are different, as the office timings are the same across the nation,” Sharma said on the sidelines of an event here.

As of now, the country’s standard time is defined by the 82.5E longitude that passes through Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh. If it were to be advanced by half an hour, the defining longitude would be 90E near the Assam-Bengal border.

The demand for a separate time zone has been raised before also. Advocates of this theory say that it will increase daylight savings and efficiency. The sunrise and sunset timings in the N-E region as well as the archipelagos of Andaman & Nicobar, and lakshadweep are different from the mainland.

The Arunanchal Pradesh Chief Minister had contended that a separate time zone was necessary to improve work efficiency and save electricity in the region. “We get up as early as 4 am… Several daylight hours are wasted as Government offices open only at 10 am and close at 4 pm,” Khandu had said.

In March, the Gauhati High Court had dismissed a public interest litigation (PIl) seeking directions to the Union Government to have a separate time zone for the N-E. Dismissing the PIl, the Bench had said, “It is within the domain of Government of India to decide whether present system of a single and uniform standard time throughout the country should continue or not.”

This is the first time a study has been done on having two different time zones in the country. In 2012, Dilip Ahuja and DP Sen Gupta from Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Advance Studies had suggested that instead of two separate zones, the smarter thing to do would be to advance Indian Standard Time by half an hour. According to them, India would save 2.7 billion units of electricity every year by shifting the IST meridian eastward, as per various reports.

In a report, lawrence liang, a professor of law at Ambedkar University, Delhi, had said that the time difference between the westernmost part of India and the easternmost point was approximately two hours. A planning commission report in 2006 also favoured different time zones in India to improve efficiency.