Delhi identifies 7,000 ‘end-of-life’ vehicles in NCR, asks govts to act

All petrol vehicles older than 15 years and diesel vehicles older than 10 years are considered as ELVs in Delhi-NCR

The Delhi government, in its drive against End of Life Vehicles (ELVs), has identified around 7,000 such vehicles in the last six months, officials aware of the drive said on Saturday.

An old vehicle is towed away in NCR. (HT Archive)

All petrol vehicles older than 15 years and diesel vehicles older than 10 years are considered as ELVs in Delhi-NCR.

“We did a pilot in many areas and the test has been successful. We recorded around 25 lakh exclusive number plates, of which around 7,000 were ELVs. Through the new system the fuel station staff will be informed of such vehicles immediately through an audio message,” a transport department official said.

Last week, environment minister Manjinder Sirsa announced that fuel will not be given to such ELVs in Delhi after March 31. He said that cameras installed at fuel stations will detect these vehicles and the fuel stations will not provide fuel to them. The transport department said installation of cameras at all fuel stations is nearly complete.

“The cameras are installed at most of the 400 fuel stations across Delhi. The integration with the software and testing is going on as of now. These cameras already installed at over 300 fuel stations were checking for and penalising vehicles running without a valid Pollution Under Check (PUC) certificate,” the official said.

As per records till September 2024, Delhi has 60,14,493 ELVs that have been deregistered by the transport department. While some have been taken off the roads, many of them are still being used in the national capital region (NCR), as per officials. Delhi impounded 22,397 such vehicles in 2023 and 2,310 in 2024 till September.

According to data collated by the transport department, till September 2024, there were 27,50,152 ELVs in Haryana, of which 220 were impounded in 2023 and 2,496 in 2024. Similarly, there are 12,38,788 ELVs registered in Uttar Pradesh, of which 3,058 and 631 were impounded in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Rajasthan has 6,06,926 ELVs, of which 389 were impounded in 2023 and 574 in 2024.

Officials said that the Delhi government has written to all neighbouring states to intensify drives against ELVs, install cameras for detection and take steps towards scrapping these vehicles.

Experts and transport planners, meanwhile, said that systematic reforms were required in the way polluting vehicles were categorised as the age of a vehicle cannot be the only determining factor to categorise them as polluting or non-polluting.

“Transport is the largest contributor to pollution in Delhi-NCR and steps need to be taken to control it. So, the easiest way is to restrict the usage of vehicles with older technology that are assumed to be more polluting. However, this is a major regulatory flaw, and grossly polluting vehicles should be identified based on in-use vehicle emission testing that is done across European countries. The major pollutants in Delhi are PM10 and PM2.5, which are not even checked while handing over the Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificates. It is high time that we also start re-imagining our PUC regime and bring structural changes,” Amit Bhatt, managing director, International Council of Clean Transport (ICCT), said.