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Nearly 40,000 e-rickshaws in Lucknow may face de-registration, scrapping
Nearly 40,000 e-rickshaws in Lucknow may face de-registration and eventual scrapping if their owners fail to comply with mandatory fitness and insurance requirements
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Nearly 40,000 e-rickshaws in Lucknow may face de-registration and eventual scrapping if their owners fail to comply with mandatory fitness and insurance requirements.
This is part of the transport department’s plan to deal with a growing number of non-compliant vehicles in the city.
The department is considering suspending the registration of e-rickshaws that have remained without valid fitness certificates or insurance for a prolonged period. Owners will be given six months to rectify the deficiencies. Vehicles that remain non-compliant after the deadline could be de-registered, seized and sent to authorised scrapping centres, officials said. However, the department has not yet finalised the date from which the proposed six-month period will begin.
Pradeep Kumar, ARTO (administration), Lucknow, said the immediate challenge was the large number of e-rickshaws already registered in the city. There is currently no prescribed limit on the number of e-rickshaws that can be registered or sold in Lucknow, he said.
“The problem is that so many e-rickshaws have already been registered in the city that we are now seeing these problems. There is no rule that fixes a maximum number of e-rickshaws that can operate in the city or restricts their sale beyond a particular number,” he said.
The proposed action will therefore focus on enforcement of existing statutory requirements rather than placing a fresh cap on registrations. Officials said action under Section 53 of the Motor Vehicles Act could be taken against vehicles that fail to meet the required conditions. Section 53 of Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 allows a registering authority or prescribed authority to suspend the certificate of registration of a motor vehicle.
The issue of unfit e-rickshaws has also come up during proceedings before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court. In an affidavit submitted before the court in 2025, the transport department had stated that more than 70% of e-rickshaw and e-auto owners in Lucknow had not obtained fitness certificates and were operating such vehicles on roads, posing a threat to passengers and other road users.
The department had also pointed to difficulties in serving notices on owners who registered vehicles using local addresses based on rent agreements. Many such owners subsequently left their rented premises, causing notices related to expired fitness certificates and other violations to be returned to the issuing authority.
Earlier, the department had attempted to restrict registration of e-rickshaws by people using Aadhaar addresses from outside Lucknow along with local rent agreements. It had also sought to discourage people from owning more than two e-rickshaws, arguing that this would prevent the vehicles from being treated primarily as a commercial business.
The high court struck down those restrictions in 2025, holding that a blanket restriction on carrying on a business could not be imposed in violation of the fundamental right under Article 19(1).
During the August 21 hearing, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court was informed that around 80,000 e-rickshaws are operating in the city. A representation submitted to the divisional commissioner by the Tempo-Taxi and Autorickshaw Joint Front, however, puts the number of registered e-rickshaws at around 1.25 lakh.
