Wednesday, July 20, 2016
By Manoj Kumawat
NGT bans ten years old diesel vehicles in Delhi
Going through the increasing problem of pollution from vehicles in Delhi, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has announced to ban all types of diesel vehicles in Delhi which have survived for more than ten years. The tribunal has asked the regional transport office (RTO) Delhi to cancel the registration of such diesel vehicles with immediate effect. According to sources of NGT it has issued an order to RTO for de-registering such vehicles and forward their list to authorities of Delhi Traffic Police for further actions according to instruction received from NGT.
This decision of NGT will highly influence to owners of Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra vehicles because ten years in 2006 most of the diesel vehicles were manufactured by both these manufacturers. Other car makers like MSIL, Honda Car India Limited made entrance in this diesel in later years. According to an estimate with implementation of this order almost 5,75,000 vehicles will be removed immediately from Delhi roads.
The decision of NGT has been criticized almost every segment of car owners. According to industry mavens instead of banning the vehicles it would have been better that NGT would have also issued scrapping policy for such vehicles. In the words of Mr. R.S. Kalsi, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, MSIL, “This is not a correct approach towards decreasing the high level of pollution in Delhi. Research data from IIT Kanpur suggests that only 2% of the pollution in Delhi is being contributed by diesel vehicles. We should approach this problem in a holistic manner and try to address the 98% of the problem. There should be a proper vehicle scrappage policy that needs to be formulated rather than de-registering diesel vehicles which are 10 years old as this will create a lot of inconvenience for users. As a consequence of this decision, transportation of food items and vegetable will be negatively impacted in the National Capital Region. There should a phasing out scheme to manage the vehicles that will go off the roads and should also be an environment friendly disposal of the vehicles”.
Commenting on the situation Mr. Rakesh Srivastava, Senior Vice-President, HMIL, said “The NGT order is towards a greener environment. The government too is working towards it with the auto manufacturers by the proposed implementation of the BS VI norms in 2020. In addition to this, an early introduction of the proposed scrappage policy by the government could motivate vehicle users towards being part of the larger mission of green environment”.