Heading for the scrapheap?

It has been about three weeks since the National Green Tribunal directed the Delhi government to deregister all diesel vehicles older than 10 years and asked the Regional Transport Office (RTO) to give a list of such vehicles to the traffic police.

Two days after that order, the green court asked the authorities to start with the 15-year-old vehicles first.

Even though the government agrees that implementing the order will bring down pollution levels in the capital, it is yet to come out with an action plan and is contemplating approaching the court with an appeal against the order.

 “The Chief Secretary took a meeting on Wednesday and the government is still examining the order and it might appeal against it. A decision is yet to be taken whether to outright implement it or appeal. It will be decided in a week's time. It might go either way,” says a senior government official.

The government's Transport department is holding meetings to understand the implications involved and there are various challenges it has to deal with, if and before it decides to implement the NGT order.

There are a number of questions which the department will have to consider and it is going to be a gargantuan task, as more than 2.82 lakh vehicles will be affected by this order, say officials.

The Central government has already challenged the order, saying there is no legal provision for the move and that it is in contravention of the Motor Vehicles Act.

“There is no provision to deregister these as per law. We will be doing it by quoting the NGT order only, which should be enough. But it still can be challenged by those affected by it,” says an official of the Delhi government's Transport Department.

One of the first hurdles that the department is looking at is the shortage of space to keep impounded vehicles. The government has already communicated to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which has been on loggerheads with the government on several occasions in the past, to provide land.

“We have some space in Burari but that won't be enough. Essentially, it is the responsibility of the DDA. Even if the land belongs to some other agency, it is the DDA's task to provide us a list of such places,” he says.

If the city government decides to implement the order, the department will issue an advertisement and also send notices to individual addresses as per the records available – and then send a list of deregistered vehicles to the Traffic Police which will have to enforce it.

The focus would be on the vehicles older than 15 years first, department officials say. But given that the number of such vehicles stands at 1.87 lakh, it will be challenging for police.

“Our enforcement department will be assisting them but there are only 20 such teams at any given time so yes it is challenging to implement and can also lead to traffic jams,” the official says.

In a sense, the NGT order is not new and similar directions were given to the state and central governments last year.  The order then was to ban such vehicles from Delhi’s roads. Now they are being deregistered.

“It has been more than one year and the government should have ideally put in place an infrastructure by now. But then it was more keen on challenging it. Now it should fix a timeline on the basis of the registration period or emission norms,” says S P Singh, senior fellow at Indian Foundation of Transport Research and Training, an independent body nominated as an observer by the Delhi government of its efforts to check pollution.

No infrastructure
According to experts, it will be difficult to implement the order overnight as there is no infrastructure or a framework to deal with challenges that might crop up.

For example, private car owners are left with only two options – either obtain a No Objection Certificate (NoC) and sell their 10-year-old diesel car outside Delhi or scrap the vehicle. But there is no policy for either of these options in the present framework to compensate the owner.

“There will be an excess supply of old age vehicles which will be sold off at low prices. Many people will not be able to afford a new age vehicle. The car owners cannot be asked to bear the cost of replacing their old vehicle with the new one,” says Singh.
“The court has not gone into the fallout and has taken a single-minded view on pollution. So the onus now is on the central and state governments to come forward with a plan detailing the modus operandi,” he says.

The Delhi government, however, is not mulling any compensatory mechanism or a scrappage policy.

“At present we don't have any approved policy and there are no such plans for the future also. There is a scrap market in Mayapuri and people will have to do it themselves,” says another official.

The government and many experts are also of the view that forcible scrapping of vehicles will give rise to litigation by car owners who have complied with the law while purchasing the vehicle and those who paid road tax for 15 years.

One of the directions which the authorities find challenging to implement is keeping a check on all over 10-year-old vehicles entering Delhi.

“Such checks would have to be done on entry points of the capital, which can lead to jams and waiting time at toll gates,” says a Transport Department official.

 Singh favours a cap on the number of vehicles allowed in the city, and says successive government should have acted earlier.

“In February 2005, a panel of experts in a meeting told the then Delhi government under Sheila Dikshit to start capping the vehicles, also because there is no parking space. Parking and vehicle owning should be read together,” he says.

“The automotive industry kept pushing the number of vehicles and with enticing interest rates, people bought cars indiscriminately and the government benefitted with the huge revenue through taxes. But the city does not have any more parking capacity; not even in colonies. Even today vehicle registration is not being discouraged except the Supreme Court order of banning diesel cars above 2000 cc,” he says.

Measures such as higher taxes on old vehicles, increasing parking charges, improving last mile connectivity and public transport have been suggested by several experts and studies over a period of time but to little avail.

“The government has delayed this beyond tolerance level and the NGT’s order is bound to create challenges as it has not confronted such a situation before. It will have to find a solution now and address all the issues on priority basis,” Singh says.