Nearly 4,000 people in Delhi fined for flouting car emission rules

From Tuesday afternoon till 6 am on Friday, 3,906 BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel four-wheelers were stopped and fined for plying in Delhi in violation of the rule

The Delhi traffic police stopped and fined nearly 4,000 people between Tuesday afternoon and Friday evening for using their petrol BS-III or diesel BS-IV vehicles, in contravention of state government orders imposed to keep the city’s air quality in check, said officers aware of the matter.

An anti-smog gun being used to curb air pollution and dust near the under-construction RRTS Station at Anand Vihar on the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut RRTS corridor, in New Delhi on Friday. (ANI)

All private diesel BS-III and petrol BS-IV have been banned from Delhi’s roads till at least November 13, as part of anti-pollution measures under Stage 3 of the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap) imposed by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM). Violators are fined up to ₹20,000 under Section 179 of the Motor Vehicles Act.

“From Tuesday afternoon till 6pm on Friday, 3,906 BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel four-wheelers were stopped and fined for plying in Delhi in violation of the rule,” said a Delhi traffic police officer aware of the matter.

“Of these, 864 were petrol vehicles and 3,042 were diesel ones,” added the officer.

On November 3, as the air quality in Delhi deteriorated to the “severe” category, CAQM imposed Grap Stage 4, under which all trucks (barring those carrying essential commodities) were banned from entering Delhi.

Further, the traffic police also fined owners of 3,592 vehicles for driving without valid Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificates.

“The drive against such vehicles is continuing and the number of fines has been increasing,” the officer quoted above said on Friday.

On November 3, as the air quality in Delhi deteriorated to the “severe” category, CAQM imposed Grap Stage 4, under which all trucks (barring those carrying essential commodities) were banned from entering Delhi.

Till November 6, when the air quality improved to the “very poor” category and the CAQM eased the curbs on trucks, traffic police had stopped 1,767 trucks at Delhi’s borders, while 150 heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) and medium goods vehicles (MGVs) and 1,296 light motor vehicles (LMVs) registered in Delhi were stopped or impounded for violating the ban, police had said.

On November 7, CAQM chose to continue restrictions on vehicles that conform only to older emission norms, and the order reached the traffic police the next day (Tuesday).

A second traffic police officer said 270 people were fined on that day, with the drive intensifying on Wednesday, with nearly 300 traffic police teams deployed across the city to stop and challan BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel four-wheelers.

“We stop four-wheelers based on their registration numbers. We feed the details of the vehicles into our e-challan machines and verify the manufacturing date of the vehicles and their emission norms stages. We issue e-challans that the owners can pay by visiting traffic police headquarters at Todapur or in the concerned courts,” the second officer said.