Vehicle scrapping policy yet to take off

The Karnataka government issued the state vehicle scrapping policy in December 2022. However, only a few thousand of the lakhs of vehicles in Bengaluru have been eligible for disposal due to stagnation in its rollout.

The most common types of vehicles regularly seeing breakdowns and engine issues on roads in Bengaluru are government and private buses, government-owned or tendered vehicles, garbage trucks and water tankers—all of which pose serious accident risks and raise safety concerns for road users.

Old vehicles, with their outdated engines, also cause pollution problems. Over 33,00,558 out of 91,58,577 vehicles over 15 are in Bengaluru Urban division as of March 31, 2023.

The Registered Vehicle Scrapping Policy of Karnataka, 2022, aimed to phase out unfit, polluting vehicles and replace them with safer, fuel-efficient ones. It aims not just to tackle the vehicular emissions caused by these “end-of-life” vehicles older than 15 years but to formalise and streamline the recycling services available for vehicles and create a system to dismantle, recycle, or sustainably dispose of them.

The policy estimated that approximately 14.3 lakh end-of-life vehicles in Karnataka that did not have valid registration or fitness certificates were fit for scrapping, and another 66 lakh vehicles will turn 15 years or older by 2027.

The state government outlined the specifications for authorising registered vehicle scrapping facilities (RVSFs) to simplify the process. It mandated that all vehicles – even from other states and Union Territories—must be scrapped only at these authorised RVSFs.

Karnataka’s only two authorised RVSFs are around Bengaluru—one in Vijayapura Hobli, Devanahalli taluk, and another in Kolala Hobli, Koratagere taluk. So, the burden of processing all scrap vehicles in Karnataka falls on these two centres.

The first RVSF in the state—Mahindra MSTC Recycling Pvt Ltd in Vijayapura Hobli, was set up by Mahindra CERO, a joint venture between central PSU MSTC Ltd and Mahindra Accelo, in September 2023. It has received and processed most of the scrapping applications in Karnataka. Out of 1,373 applications by the end of February, 1,157 have been approved.

Scrapping voluntary for private vehicles

The vehicle scrapping policy does not mandate the scrapping of private vehicles—it is still a voluntary exercise for vehicle owners.

Besides contacting the two authorised facilities in the state directly, vehicle owners can also apply to scrap their vehicles via the Voluntary Vehicle Scrapping Application on the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ Parivahan portal. They can then go to any RVSF-managed collection centres across the state to deposit their vehicles.

A senior BBMP official, who was privy to early-stage meetings and planning before the policy came into effect, explained that the logistics made the implementation a herculean task. “In initial meetings with stakeholders, there was some backlash from vehicle owners in rural areas because of a high number of over-age vehicles there. They also argued that the policy couldn’t be applied to them as they didn’t have the finances to keep replacing goods vehicles or tractors used for agriculture,” he told DH. 

He added that even if a mandate for scrapping private, non-transport vehicles is approved and passed, it can be implemented effectively only after logistical hurdles can be overcome.

C Mallikarjuna, Additional Commissioner of Transport (Enforcement, South), told DH that while he doesn’t envision a mandatory policy for private vehicles any time soon, giving a thrust to the existing policy might encourage more private owners to come forward.

“I hope the central government comes out with some mandatory rules that vehicles aged above 17 or 19 should be scrapped. Then I think it will pick up pace because people’s mindset will change, and more people will try this out,” he said, anticipating a major change by the fifth year of this policy (2027).

He emphasised that this goes hand-in-hand with the expansion of infrastructure and supply of electric vehicles. “Electric vehicle charging stations with reduced charging times fixed at short distances have to come to the market along with this scrapping of older vehicles. If this happens, longer-distance vehicles will be replaced with electric vehicles, and vehicle owners will offer their older vehicles to scrap,” he said.

Mandate for government vehicles

Although the policy mandates the scrapping of all government vehicles ages 15 years and above, the central portal reflects only 40 applications submitted at both the authorised RVSFs, with only six applications that have been approved.

However, Mallikarjuna told DH that 600 to 700 vehicles from state and central governments have already been scrapped.

“The RVSFs would have taken the vehicles for scrap but wouldn’t have entered the information on the database as regularly because there are no tax concessions for government vehicles. Hence, the question of speeding up the process may not exist here,” he clarified.

The state needed to scrap nearly 15,000 government-owned overage vehicles, or about 5,000, by March. However, Mallikarjun recently confirmed that although the state has picked up the pace of scrapping, it cannot meet the goal of scrapping 5,000 vehicles by March.

Additionally, not all overage vehicles are eligible for scrapping as they continue to ply on the roads as long as they have fitness certificates and have renewed their Certificate of Registration (RCs). In some cases, especially with government vehicles, scrapping is not a practical decision.

For example, out of more than 400 fire tenders registered with the  Karnataka State Fire and Emergency Services (KSFES), at least 284 are over 15 years old, as per information shared by Kamal Pant, Director General of Police, KSFES. According to the mandatory vehicle scrapping policy for government vehicles, these vehicles must also be scrapped due to being “overage”.

However, Pant calls it a unique case. “Even if many of our vehicles are over 15 years old, they wouldn’t have crossed thousands of kilometres because they don’t run daily and work within their jurisdictions. Even among the overage ones, only about 120 have required engine repairs or replacements besides regular maintenance because we keep our vehicles in top condition. After all, they are emergency services. Therefore, they cannot be scrapped just because of age,” he said.

He noted that he has written to the state government and the central ministry of road transport and highways and is awaiting their directions on the steps ahead. At present, he added, none of those 284 overage vehicles are plying on the roads and are instead kept as backup vehicles pressed into service only in dire need.

The specially modified fire tenders are also quite expensive due to the fabrication and time required to manufacture them. Ahead of the summer, with a higher chance of forest or accidental fires, it is also not the best decision to remove them if they function well.

Abandoned or impounded vehicles

This policy includes a provision for RVSFs to buy abandoned vehicles and vehicles that are impounded and go unclaimed over a period via auctions.

For example, Kuldeep Kumar Jain, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Traffic, Bengaluru East, noted that vehicles impounded by the traffic police, besides those involved in crimes or accidents, usually remain in the police station premises until court proceedings close. Due to space constraints, vehicles might even be shifted to Mallasandra if they remain in police custody for many years.

“If the vehicle owner or user has the proper documents to release the vehicle and pays any pending dues in the case of impounding, the court can release the vehicle the very next day,” he said.

However, if nobody claims it for a period of time or if a vehicle has been involved in an accident beyond repair, the police can auction it with the court’s permission. Interested RVSFs can purchase these vehicles and dispose of them properly.

This is a win-win for the RVSFs, who get more scrap to disassemble, the traffic police, who get their premises cleared, and the public, who do not have to suffer from a lack of road space outside stations that see such vehicles piling up over the years.

Certificates of Deposit

According to the dashboard on the National Portal for Vehicle Scrapping Related Services, maintained by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, as of February 29, 2024, Karnataka saw a mere 1,380 applications for scrapping being submitted by vehicle owners; only 1,164 of which have been approved.

Many other states are not doing this well. The state has seen a few hundred scrapping applications approved monthly since September 2023. However, the Certificate of Deposit (CoD) issue remains an issue. As of February 29, 2024, only 423 CoDs have been issued, of which 68 are unsigned. Similarly, only 84 Certificates of Vehicle Scrapping (CVS) have been issued, which indicates the number of vehicles finally disposed of.

CoDs issued by the RVSF recognise the transfer of vehicle ownership from the owner to the facility for further treatment. Each certificate has a unique ID to prevent misuse or malpractice and enable easy tracking of vehicles handed over to a scrapping facility.

Vehicle owners can submit CoDs when purchasing new vehicles to obtain tax concessions. However, the processing of these CoDs had been delayed because the previous system of tax concession calculations stipulated the tax concession given for newly registered vehicles against submission of CoD at 25% of tax paid on the scrapping vehicles.

This led to several issues in tax calculations as systems have changed over 20 years, and old tax data would not have been available with the vehicle owner or in manual records with the transport department, C Mallikarjuna, Additional Commissioner of Transport (Enforcement, South) told DH.

The new system of tax concession slabs for end-of-life vehicles, effective from January 22, 2024, is expected to boost scrapping in the state.