Door-to-door survey to count overage vehicles in Delhi

Officials said teams of the transport department, traffic police and MCD sanitation workers will conduct the survey in 250 municipal wards across Delhi

The Delhi government plans to carry out a door-to-door survey as part of its crack down on over 5 million end of life vehicles that were deregistered between January and October 2022, officials aware of the matter said on Monday.

Officials said that only a minuscule number of the 5.3 million deregistered vehicles have been scrapped so far. (HT Photo)

The officials said teams of the transport department, traffic police and MCD sanitation workers will conduct the survey in 250 municipal wards across the city. Teams will go from door to door and check the age and ownership of the vehicles parked on the colony roads, they added.

According a senior municipal official, who is aware of the government plan, said the decision to carry out the survey was taken last week in a meeting attended by chief secretary Naresh Kumar, additional chief secretary Manish Gupta and other senior officials. “Sanitation workers are also proposed to be deployed in this house survey exercise. The survey is to be carried out by the joint teams of transport department, police and the civic body,” the official said asking not to be named.

He added that officials from New Delhi Municipal Council and Delhi Cantonment Board, who attended the meeting, were also asked to select wards where the survey can be carried out.

Delhi government officials did not respond to requests for comment.

A Delhi police officer familiar with the plans said that all the help will be extended to provide security to the survey exercise based on the availability of the police force on that day.

Transport officials said deregistration is only a legal process, and it is possible that such vehicles may be illegally plying on city roads. They said that only a minuscule number of the 5.3 million deregistered vehicles have been scrapped so far, and it’s possible that they have been parked on streets across the city with their owners not sending them to scrapyards and driving in violation of the law.

The transport department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

No vehicle which is 15 years old can legally operate on the roads of the national capital, according to orders issued by the National Green Tribunal (2015) and the Supreme Court (2018). For diesel vehicles, this time period is cut down to 10 years only.

The MCD official added that the proposal to deploy sanitation workers for gathering information about old vehicles was floated. “We will ask the sanitation workers to get information about old vehicles in areas assigned to them. On providing information, picture and location of such vehicle, they may be given a fixed monetary amount . We often find such old vehicles parked on the roadside in residential colonies gathering dust,” the official said.

BS Vohra, who heads the East Delhi resident welfare association (RWA) joint front, said that such a survey could be carried out to assess the ground situation, but sales data from transport department must back it. “There won’t be any resistance from people as the general mindset about not using these old cars is already settled. Therefore, the agencies should not directly send such cars for scrap. In many cases, the vehicles are still in good condition, and some time frame should be provided to the owner to sell them,” he added.

While there is no data on the total number of end of life vehicles scrapped so far, officials said that more than 1,553 such vehicles were impounded last month during a drive.

From a legal standpoint, deregistration immobilises vehicles and ensures that they cannot be lawfully used. “Deregistered vehicles cannot be sold and the insurance of such vehicles cannot be purchased. Using such vehicles is illegal and they can be impounded,” said a transport official.

Vehicular emissions contribute around 9% of the PM10 load and around 20% of the PM2.5 load in Delhi, according to a 2016 study by Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.