JOIN USThe National Green Tribunal ordered diesel vehicles over 10 years old off the roads national capital on April 7.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party government has said that it is determined to ensure full implementation of the NGT ban, but needs Centre's assistance in enforcing it.
Almost 1.53 lakh diesel-powered vehicles older than 10 years are plying in the city, according to the official figures.
The city government is busy working out a comprehensive plan to remove all of them, Transport Minister Gopal Rai says.
But his only grouse is that the elected government in Delhi lacks legal force to enforce the ban. He says only police, as per the existing laws, has powers to impound vehicles that have outlived their age.
The order, put on hold by the NGT itself till May 1 when it will hold its next hearing, follows a similar one passed in November last year banning all vehicles over 15 years old from city roads.
“Until an amendment is made by the Centre in the Motor Vehicles Act, Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh will legally not be able to implement NGT’s order as existing laws do not allow department officials to impound vehicles of more than 10 years and 15 years old,” Rai says.
An amendment could give legal right to transport departments to impound vehicles, as ordered by the green tribunal.
But with a mammoth task at hand, Delhi Transport Department has as an interim measure sought 250 civil defence personnel to remove old vehicles.
At present, the department has only 166 staffers in its enforcement section.
With its current staff strength, the Transport Department has fallen short of executing the NGT order banning all vehicles aged over 15 years, and it also failed to bring into force its own ban on online taxi hailing firms like Uber after a woman was raped by a cab driver in December last year.
Last week, Gopal Rai held a joint meeting with the transport ministers of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to discuss an effective plan to implement the NGT order.
According to him, the ministers arrived at a consensus on asking the BJP-led Union government to make changes in the relevant sections of the Motor Vehicles Act, so that the transport departments are empowered to impound vehicles.
It was also decided that the three states will start a joint drive to take action against overloaded vehicles in the national capital region (NCR).
The states also decided that Centre’s help will be sought for installation of weigh-in-motion machines along the national highways in the NCR region, so that grossly polluting overloaded vehicles, particularly trucks, can be easily tracked down.
Officials say after the joint meeting Rai shot off a letter to the Union Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, asking him for his help to implement the NGT order.
Anumita Roychowdhury, Head of the Air Pollution Team at Centre for Science and Environment, says that retiring polluting vehicles will help ease the pollution load.
“They (the government) have to work on all pollution sources. But vehicular pollution will still have to be the priority because this pollution happens within our breathing zone,” she says.
According to the green tribunal, particulate matter (PM) in Delhi’s air, which was recorded at 191 ìg/m3 in 2000, reduced to 161 ìg/m3 by 2007 thanks to substitution of diesel by compressed natural gas in public transport buses. But it shot up to 360 ìg/m3 by 2014.
The expert opinion is that pollutants emitted by vehicles remain suspended in the air for longer periods, compared to coarser particles.
“The particulate pollution remains three-four times higher than the normal during the winter months, and over a period of time the levels are rising.,” Roychowdhury tells Deccan Herald.
“This essentially gives a message that Delhi will now have to implement its next generation action plan as quickly as possible,” she adds
She also says that emissions are not always related to the age of a vehicle.
“A five-year-old car can pollute air more than a 10-year-old car if it is not maintained properly. Stringent on-road inspection should be done so that visibly polluting vehicles are caught and fined,” she says.
Staff shortage
Hamstrung by staff shortage, the government had earlier decided to make pollution under control (PUC) certificate mandatory for refuelling vehicles.
The mandatory PUC certificate, however, was put off after facing stiff opposition from the Delhi Petrol Dealers Association.
The green tribunal’s move to ban old diesel-fuelled vehicles has also drawn flak from transporters. Days after the order, truckers threated to stop moving essential commodities in and out of Delhi to express disapproval.
“It is surprising that NGT could supersede the Supreme Court’s order allowing over 15 years old vehicles in the case of AIR 1999 Supreme Court 301 “M C Mehta Vs Union of India”,” All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) President Bhim Whadhwa says.
According to AIMTC, nearly 15,000-20,000 trucks enter Delhi daily.
The body claimed that as a part of the order a number of vehicles are being impounded at night and money is being fleeced from truckers.
It said, “The government must pay heed to the loss of livelihood of lakhs of truckers and their family members on account of this short-sighted diktat.” But the AIMTC have postponed until May 1 – the next date of hearing by NGT – its planned strike to protest against the green tribunal’s order.
The Delhi Government on April 13 had submitted to the NGT that its prohibitory orders were causing “serious concern and practical difficulties”.
Essential services including food supply to Delhi were being affected by the order, the government had said.
The NGT accepted that the “larger public interest” must not be “adversely affected due to impounding of diesel vehicles of more than 10 years old”. And it said that the vehicles would not be impounded for “two weeks”.
It is a known that diesel-fuelled vehicles have larger share in pollution inventory than those run on petrol and CNG, but experts feel that their immediate removal may create practical problems.
“Instead of a drastic ban, the city can adopt a time-bound phase-out plan for old vehicles. As it is done in other parts of the world, the older vehicles can be colour-coded for easy recognition. Either registered within or outside Delhi, they need to be labelled,” Roychowdhury says.