Bengaluru: Bowing to public pressure, the decision to deny fuel to end-of-life vehicles in Delhi starting from July 1 has now been postponed. Instead, the fuel ban will now apply to vehicles in Delhi as well as five high vehicle density districts in the National Capital Region (NCR) from November 1. The ban will be applicable to the rest of the NCR from April next year.

While the ban will benefit Delhi’s air quality by eliminating high-polluting vehicles, the government also needs to ensure access to better and more numbers of high tech testing centres, experts told The Wire. Similarly, innovative mechanisms such as subsidies in road taxes for properly maintained vehicles would make it more lucrative for consumers as well, they added.

Fuel ban pushed to November 1

As per an order published by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) on July 8, the decision to deny fuel to end-of-life vehicles - diesel vehicles that are more than 10 years old, and petrol vehicles older than 15 - will now be implemented in Delhi and five high vehicle density districts in the NCR from November 1. 

The five high vehicle density districts are Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar and Sonipat. 

The fuel ban on end-of-life vehicles will apply to the rest of the NCR from April next year..

The decision to delay the fuel ban on end-of-life vehicles was to “address technological gaps and to enable simultaneous enforcement” of the ban in both the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi and five districts in the NCR, as per a government press release.

The CAQM had first announced that the ban on fuelling end-of-life vehicles would be implemented from July 1. However, the Government of the NCT of Delhi wrote to the CAQM on July 3 that the ANPR system – a camera-based digital system to identify end-of-life vehicles at fuelling stations – lacks “the requisite robustness, with issues related to technological glitches, camera placement, working of sensors and speakers”, per the July 8 order accessed by The Wire, and a government press release. The letter also added that the system was not yet “fully integrated” with the database of neighbouring NCR states and that it is unable to identify end-of-life vehicles in cases where there are issues related to High Security Registration Plates (which are hologram-based, tamper-proof vehicle plates with advanced security features).

As The Wire had reported recently, end-of-life vehicles were already banned from operating on Delhi’s roads by a 2018 Supreme Court ruling. However, according to official figures, over six million such vehicles ply in Delhi flouting this rule.

According to several estimates such as this one, Delhi is one of the most polluted cities in not just India but the world when it comes to air quality. According to the Global Air Pollution Report 2024 released by Swiss air technology company IQAIR in March this year, Delhi is the world’s second-most polluted city, with a fine particulate matter concentration of more than 21 times the guidelines set by the World Health Organisation. The concentration of this major air pollutant in the national capital increased by 6% in 2024 compared to from 2023.

Importance of high tech testing centres

While the phasing out of end-of-life vehicles has been long-pending, it also has to be very strategic, Anju Goel, an air quality management scientist at Delhi’s The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) told The Wire. The distinction between commercial and private vehicles has to be factored into this, she said. For instance, commercial vehicles – such as public transport buses and taxis – contribute more to the air pollution in Delhi than do private cars, so targeting the former would be extremely important. As will ensuring that two-wheelers are maintained in line with emission standards too, she added.

“Our research a few years ago showed that two wheelers contribute as much as 22-25% to Delhi’s air pollution,” she told The Wire. This is primarily because the numbers of two-wheelers in the NCR are very high, and many also use older technology such as BS-III, she said.

Similarly, the current order to scrap end-of-life vehicles that arrive at fuelling stations would also generate a lot of waste, disposing of which will not be easy, she added.

Using fitness-related and road worthiness-related parameters to identify vehicles that need to be scrapped therefore, is also more important than using an age-based categorisation – which is how end-of-life vehicles are currently defined – Goel commented.

“This is where an adequate number of high technology testing centres come into play,” she said. “Currently, testing centres use old technology and there are very few such as the one in Manesar that use the latest technology to test the emission standards of vehicles.”

Ensuring that there are adequate well-equipped testing centres also means that the phasing out of end-of-life vehicles will not become an equity issue, Goel added.

“It is also important to not see this as an equity issue, because testing and maintaining vehicles regardless of how rich or poor someone is means that the quality of air in Delhi will improve and this would be actually be beneficial for the poor who have no resources to treat health concerns caused by pollution, or install air purifiers in their homes to tackle this as rich people would,” she said. 

Innovative mechanisms such as subsidies in road taxes for properly maintained vehicles, and market-based mechanisms such as ones where people can trade their scrappage certificates with others who want to purchase a new vehicle would make it a win-win for consumers as well, Goel added.

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