Nitin Gadkari is the Indian Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways who is very much in favor of the usage of ethanol fuel in propelling vehicles. On June 13th, 2026, Nitin Gadkari made a law that allowed the usage of ethanol fuel in propelling vehicles, and it has become one of the biggest successes of Nitin Gadkari. However, there are some problems that have been found out in the trends now. What are the problems?
Ethanol fuel is defined as an alcohol fuel that can be made by the process of fermenting various types of crops like sugarcane, corn, and rice. The propelling of your vehicles using ethanol fuel is the same as propelling your vehicle using petrol.
In case you use it as fuel in your car, the process will remain similar to that of petrol. All you need to do is fill it in the fuel tank, burn it in your engine, and start driving your car.
The government has been slowly increasing the content of ethanol in our regular petrol for the last ten years. Although the percentage of petrol with ethanol was just 1.53% in 2014, it increased to 15% in 2024. Now the government wants the car to run on 85% or 100% ethanol—E85 and E100.
So far, the basic argument of Gadkari remains simple—India needs to spend ₹22 lakh crore every year importing crude oil from other nations.
The domestic ethanol can take its place and save the money spent by bringing it back to India. Also, it is environmentally friendly because it burns better than petrol.
It looks like a great economic as well as environmental bargain on paper.
But then why the outrage?
The Criticism: Why People Are Calling It a Failure
However, for the ordinary motorists, the big challenge comes in terms of fuel inefficiency. Ethanol has lower energy density compared to petrol. This means that, although an automobile may give you 20km per litre of petrol, the same automobile will offer you 13 to 15km on a litre of 100% ethanol fuel.
This is made even worse by the fact that it catches the ordinary person who was not forewarned.
Whereas around 2025, the E20 blend was introduced into the petrol pumps of India instead of the E10 blend, consumers did not know anything about this change.
They did not receive information from the pump nozzle, government, or even the automobile manufacturers.
They simply received fewer kilometers per liter of fuel and wondered why their bills were going up.
Gadkari has accused any critics about the use of the E20 fuel, as it could damage their vehicles, saying that this is a mere "paid campaign" of the petroleum industry lobby.
However, the facts are clear for millions of automobile users.
Ethanol is an aggressive substance. It takes moisture from the atmosphere and corrodes rubber gaskets, fuel pipes, and plastic parts of the engine. And the matter is that most of the current cars used in India, including cars that meet the BS6 norms and were purchased since 2020, have been produced and approved for E10 and no higher E20 fuels.
A well-known example is a Maruti XL6 owner with the problem of fuel hoses damaged due to the insects attracted to the smell of ethanol fuel.
This example is not an odd one but one of the cases of actual problems that occur in the process of changing the standards of fuel faster than the number of cars can be adapted to these changes.
As it was already mentioned above, the minister, Gadkari, proposed that car producers could provide upgrade kits to adjust the car to the new fuel. And here lies the problem because the owner of the car should buy the kit himself. Someone who paid several lakhs for his car, fully suitable for the fuel standard in force at the moment, is now offered to spend additional money on the protection of his car from the government-mandated fuel.
Nevertheless, although the Indian minister for roads, transport, and highways has been actively promoting the mixing of ethanol in petrol automobiles, one may say that there is a hidden flaw in this project.
In spite of all efforts, the 10 percent mixture of ethanol into diesel has failed. It should be mentioned that Gadkari himself confessed to that in a public speech when he said that "experiments to use ethanol in diesel engines were unsuccessful."
It is worth mentioning since the commercial cars in India depend only on diesel. In case the mixture of 10 percent ethanol in diesel fails, then it means that this policy affects only a small number of Indian consumers. Now, however, the government is going to experiment with isobutanol.
One of the most embarrassing criticisms in this entire policy comes on a personal level. The sons of Gadkari run a company called Cian Agro, which makes ethanol.
The minister himself, through his designation as road transport and highways minister, is placed in a direct position to decide, formulate, and implement the policies relating to the use of ethanol in fuels in the country.
The response of the minister to this allegation has always been that the son's company makes less than 1% of the total ethanol produced in the whole of India.
But this is not the problem here. The fact that there is any family involvement of a financial nature in this industry, which the minister is promoting through governmental policies, amounts to a definite conflict of interest.
This issue was raised time and again, but never answered satisfactorily.
The foremost benefit of using ethanol fuel is the fact that ethanol is eco-friendly. However, what needs to be pointed out is that according to the environmentalists, sugarcane, which is one of the largest producers of ethanol in India, is one of the thirstiest crops.
India is suffering from the scarcity of water problem. The states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka experience scarcity of water very often. An increase in the production of ethanol through the cultivation of sugarcane will place further strain on the limited water resource, which includes groundwater and rivers.
The production of eco-friendly fuel ethanol and, at the same time, utilization of water sources cannot be considered environmentally friendly. Gadkari has proposed other solutions for the production of ethanol, such as surplus grains, bamboo, and seaweed algae.
However, the matter is that they are not yet advanced enough to substitute sugarcane.
In the past, Gadkari had assured the public that the price of ethanol would be only ₹15 per liter, which would indeed be truly revolutionary for common vehicle owners. This did not happen. In today’s market, ethanol is being sold at ₹65-70 per liter, while the price of petrol stands at ₹97+. While it is true that the current price of ethanol is much lower than that of petrol, this is not really close to the revolutionary level.
Gadkari was aggressive in his defense. He dared critics at the Business Today India@100 Summit to come up with an example of one vehicle affected by E20 fuel. Gadkari also charged that those who criticized his fuel blending program were running a "paid campaign for the oil companies."
Gadkari got backing from the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers and the Automotive Research Association of India. Even the Supreme Court dismissed a case against his fuel policy.
However, labeling the critics as paid lobbyists does not make the problems faced by car owners any less real.
There is nothing inherently wrong with Gadkari's ethanol policy dream. Saving India from fossil fuel dependence, helping farmers, and cleansing Indian cities are all worthy and important objectives. The goal is right.
However, an excellent policy dream when rushed into effect before sufficient infrastructure has been built, without taking care of those already using the previous fuel, and without informing the public does serious damage to many innocent citizens. Hundreds of millions of people living in India did not agree to take part in any test run on policy changes and paid for their automobiles under the policies prevailing then.
This is the reason why Nitin Gadkari's ethanol policy is getting so much criticism—because they believe that they have been made to suffer for a noble policy dream.
