[TusharK]

According to government data, the Delhi Transport Department de-registered more than 50 lakh old vehicles in 2022.



As per a Supreme Court order from 2018, diesel vehicles over 10 years of age and petrol vehicles that are more than 15 years old have to be taken off the roads. Over 53 lakh vehicles that had crossed their age limit have been de-registered in the state since 2018.

According to the official data, out of the 53,38,045 vehicles de-registered so far, about 46 lakh were petrol vehicles, 4.15 lakh were diesel-powered and 1.46 lakh were CNG vehicles. Also, out of the 13.4 million vehicles currently plying on the streets of the capital, only 7.8 million are technically fit to ply.

To operate vehicles that have crossed their age limit, one needs to obtain a fitness certificate. Those failing to comply can be fined up to Rs 10,000.

Link to Team-BHP News

[RaghuVis]

Have to say a very strange summary.

There is mention of SC order on a 10-year diesel scrapping policy but out of 5 million de-registered vehicles, 4.6 million that is 92% are petrol vehicles. So what should one make out of these statistics?

Another point to note -- Out of these 5 million de-registered vehicles, can anyone estimate how many are still running in Delhi with no fear of the law?

[batish]

Most pathetic NGT judgement till date. Is it even plausible that these 50 Lakh vehicles have been scrapped?

[chinmaypillay]

What a waste of resources, most ridiculous judgement with no long-term vision and planning. A well-maintained old vehicle will always go a long way in polluting less than the new ones.

[achyutaghosh]

Originally Posted by RaghuVis

There is mention of SC order on a 10-year diesel scrapping policy but out of 5 million de-registered vehicles, 4.6 million that is 92% are petrol vehicles. So what should one make out of these statistics?

Possible that they are counting two wheelers also? Not sure whether the rule applies to them, but then the 92% petrol number may make sense.

[giri1.8]

Statistics on how much pollution has reduced due this will be a good read

[ranjith_cbz]

This legislation and the way it's implemented is the most absurd one i saw. All the legislations about climate change/global warming are targeted towards disenfranchised powerless middle class people.

The biggest trick/scam big corporations have pulled off is to convince people and govts in believing that the climate change disaster is the doing of common people and they themselves can avert it by brining costly and unaffordable changes in their small insignificant lives. All the while they continue to damage the ecosystem they operate their business in. Be it big oil and other mega corporations who have policy/lawmakers, politicians and regulatory bodies in their circle of influence directly or indirectly.

How do we explain that petrol contributes 92% of the vehicles while diesel is so less when in fact the number should be higher when we have concluded that diesel is the dirty fuel and the ratio of diesel vehicles far outweighed petrol vehicles in the past decade and half/ Something doesn't add up..

[Chhanda Das]

The flip side of ban on aging vehicles: It is regulatory destruction of economic value

Regulations can, and are leading to significant value creation in the economy. However, there are also regulations that destroy very significant economic value. These are not necessarily regulations by the executive, but regulations that have come out due to the judiciary.

Specifically, if one looks at the Supreme Court order on October 29, 2018 that prohibited the plying of 15-year-old petrol and 10-year-old diesel vehicles in the national capital region and directed the transport department to announce such vehicles to be impounded if found plying, it is leading to humungous destruction of property and economic value. It is especially of concern since the central government had subsequently come out with a new voluntary vehicle scrapping policy, which looks at the vehicle's fitness as the criteria for scrapping and not its age.

Let us start by evaluating the impact of the regulatory change brought in by judicial intervention. Approximately 3 lakh two-wheelers will get scrapped annually and about 1 lakh four-wheelers will get scrapped annually. Taking a conservative residual value of two-wheelers to be Rs 10,000 on average, and a residual value of four-wheelers to be Rs 2 lakh on average, that is value destruction of a whopping Rs 2,300 crores annually. What are we getting in return? We are supposed to get (a) cleaner air, (b) more demand for vehicles and hence more jobs, (c) the creation of a vibrant scrappage industry and hence more jobs and (d) the creation of an electric vehicle retrofitting industry. Are these really the benefits that we will get? Let us look at each one of them more closely.

Looking at the first supposed benefit of cleaner air, if this was really the objective of the NGT (National Green Tribunal) and the courts, then the order would have been to have stricter norms for pollution checks. The criteria for scrapping vehicles would have been their fitness check and their pollution emission checks, and not the age of the car.

This is exactly the regulation that the central government has brought in, which focuses on the fitness of the vehicle than merely the age. The orders to scrap vehicles based on age appear to be more driven toward creating a market. But at whose cost? Do the courts have the right to snatch away property from people based on such flimsy arguments of pollution based on the age of a vehicle? What is a pensioner expected to do when she bought what she thought was the last vehicle that would be hers for the rest of her life? Where is she expected to get the money to buy another vehicle? When she bought the vehicle, the contract with the government was that she can drive the vehicle till it is fit to drive. It was not based on the age of the vehicle.

Why are the courts and the state government now suddenly snatching away that vehicle in the name of pollution when clearly one can have emissions as a norm for scrapping cars and not age? If at all a regulation is to be brought in that scraps vehicles based on age, then that rule should have been declared at the time of buying the vehicle, and not midway through the life of the vehicle. Such an action would be tantamount to cheating the people off of their property. Such regulation may be prospective but never retrospective. In fact, around the world, age has rarely ever been used as a criterion to scrap vehicles. In fact, most vehicle scrappage policies are driven by incentives and not by fiat. By forcing the scrappage of vehicles by age, the courts are snatching away property from citizens.

In fact, the Constitution originally provided for the right to property under Articles 19 and 31. Article 19 guaranteed all citizens the right to acquire, hold and dispose of the property. Article 31 provided that "no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law". It was also provided that compensation would be paid to a person whose property has been taken for public purposes, and that is how the USA had designed its own vehicle scrappage policy. Unfortunately, the provisions relating to the right to property were changed. The 44th Amendment of 1978 removed the right to property from the list of fundamental rights. A new provision, Article 300-A, was added to the constitution, which provided that "no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law".

Subsequent liberalization of the economy and the government's initiative to set up special economic zones led to many protests by farmers and led to calls for the reinstatement of the fundamental right to private property. The Supreme Court itself had sent notice to the government questioning why the right to property should not be brought back. And, now we see the apex court itself taking away property from citizens in a manner that begs to have more rationale.

If age was a criterion for taking away property, imagine if the courts now decide that all houses that are over 30 years of age should now be demolished and rebuilt as it has been found that a few houses above the age of 30 years have collapsed. It would obviously lead to a massive demolition industry, lead to new buildings being created, and many jobs getting created. But is that the right thing to do? At whose cost would these industries and jobs get created? Such actions happen in countries like China. Not in a democratic country like India. With pollution as an excuse, massive value destruction is happening. In fact, vehicle owners cannot even get their vehicles converted to electric vehicles as the norms are not ready and the homologation rules are too complex to make electric retro-fitment economically viable.

Let us look at the second projected benefit of more demand for vehicles and hence more jobs. Does everyone really have that kind of disposable money to be able to buy new vehicles at a drop of a hat? With rising expenses and the rising cost of medical care, buying new vehicles will really not be the top priority. And, is it even morally right to first snatch away someone's vehicle so that the person is then forced to buy another vehicle?

Then we should also pass a regulation to demolish all houses above the age of 30 years as people would then buy new houses and grow the economy. The argument is obviously bordering the ludicrous.

Similarly, if we look at the third and fourth benefits of creating a scrappage industry and the creation of the electric retrofitting industry, both arguments are perverse as we are creating these industries by taking away someone's hard-earned property.

To add to the woes, there is no clarity on how the electric vehicle retro-fitting will work as a retro-fitment kit for each model of a vehicle would require homologation which is extremely expensive and time-consuming. Again, one only needs to compare it with the hypothetical order of demolishing all houses that are above the age of 30 years, to see the unethical nature of this order.

One has not witnessed such large-scale destruction of economic value through regulations in the recent past. Unfortunately, since the orders supposedly lead to a larger market for the automobile giants, it is a losing battle for the weak middle-class to be able to challenge the order. The middle-class cannot do dharnas and choke arterial roads and highways. They have to get up in the morning and go for their jobs and keep the economic engine running and mutely submit themselves to the regulatory burdens. And thus, yet again it is the middle-class that will be at the receiving end of a regulatory intervention that helps large companies rather than protecting the vulnerable.

The above is an excerpt from an article authored by Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya, President, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research which was published on January 13, 2022. The original article can be found in the following link :-

https://www.indiatoday.in/opinion-co...590-2022-01-13

[Dry Ice]

Good riddance, the capital is breathing so much better this year! Oh wait …

[DicKy]

Someone should also put a chart of Delhi's pollution levels since the draconian NGT ban next to this news article.

[thanixravindran]

The news report mentions that these many vehicles are just off the books. This does not mean they are off the roads. I bet not even 10% would have been scrapped. And not to forget the other contributors to pollution. Best of luck if you are trying to comprehend a real world correlation

[SKC-auto]

After many years of embracing EVs and achieving EV sales of >80%, the total kms run on electricity in Norway is just 17% or 83% still on petrol or diesel.

In a developing country like ours with increasing car sales, and with old ICE vehicles replaced by new ICE vehicles, I believe it will take many years to reap any measured benefit.

The question also is what other areas did action taken to reduce pollution.

[ajayc123]

Very sad reminder of a strange policy decision. I have lost 2 of my 4 cars to this ruling, and sold for peanuts, before 15 years.

Don't know, if its good or bad, but definitely their life was cut short abruptly.

[revvharder]

I remember when the ruling came out, i had to part ways with our Ritz VDI which had only 80000 kms on the odo, it was such an agonizing experience. I cried for a few days after it left us, it had so many fond memories and so much life left in it but due to some idiot environmentalist/lobbyist we were gifted with such ruling and no one has been able to get it overturned as the rich don't care, manufacturers got more money while the class of people who suffered due to such rules just shifted from a car to two wheeler or a public transport as they have to put food on their table at the end of the day.

There should actually be a class action lawsuit to overturn this ruling, all this unjust enrichment and for what nothing, nobody is breathing better all it has done is filled the treasuries with more taxes, make rich richer and poor poorer even if it is just a few lacs for the working class.

I, myself have decided not to buy a car for myself unless it is really necessary and for the meanwhile have invested that money.

It is actually a sad state of affairs on one hand we are a democratic country, on the other hand we are imposed with such blanket rules like Sunfilm, NGT etc.
On one hand we are supposed to be look upto countries like USA on the other hand population still cannot be controlled.
On one hand if someone speaks about religion new rules can be made, Supreme court gives new rulings every other day on the other hand if someone tries to do something about these arbitrary rules they are slapped with a fine.
On one hand sunfilms are banned on the other hand political leader, goons, police, DM's are still using a jet black tint.
And the list goes on.

I recently was talking to a cousin of mine who has become an environmentalist and studied via DU and Tata Institute, she has literally no grasp of the real world problems i don't know what they were taught but it seems like they were told to write DIESEL BAD ELECTRIC GOOD 1000's of times. She can't give any proper reasoning it but keeps arguing how diesel vehicles have ruined the environment for current and future generations . She isn't aware of how much resources are being wasted by such blanket rules but at the end of the day DIESEL BAD ELECTRIC GOOD.

[MT_Hyderabad]

Pollution caused and resources utilised for production of the replacements for these vehicles should be calculated and shown to the courts. Of course, they are also not '0' polluting vehicles.

Basically, it is just another way of heavy taxation, nothing else.

Mine and my brother's car are impacted by this rule. My Delhi registered petrol car is 14 years old and with me in Hyderabad, it just did 75 k kms, while my brother sold a VW Polo for 1.35 lakhs! as its registration was expiring.