Explained: As Delhi Pauses Blanket Ban on Old Vehicles, Can Fitness Tests Replace Age Limits?

“Let me prove it. Let me go to a pollution centre and get my car examined—like you go to a hospital and get your heart checked out. If I pass the test, I should not be made to scrap my car,” a retired bureaucrat had told The Quint as the public ire in New Delhi over a decade-old ban on overage private vehicles grew in the past month and a half.That ire is now set to dispel as the Supreme Court on 12 August, Monday, passed an interim order stalling the ban and barring police and other authorities from taking any coercive action against the owners."There are people who look after their cars well, so it all comes down to their roadworthiness which can be checked with a fitness test," the retired bureaucrat had added, echoing what the Delhi government said in its plea in the apex court.Although the ban on overage vehicles itself goes back many years, the recent backlash began after the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) ordered that deregistered diesel and petrol vehicles be denied fuel starting 1 July. The Delhi government had the order put on hold.Amid the policy pushback and legal wrangling, The Quint explains:How and why the blanket ban was implemented? What has changed over the years?What will pausing the ban mean? Will fitness tests alone be enough to regulate emissions?Delhi Air Pollution: Are Harsher Penalties for Stubble Burning Missing the Mark?The landmark judgment to ban diesel vehicles older than 10 years and petrol vehicles over 15 years in Delhi was delivered in 2015 by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) by a bench headed by the then chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar. The bench had stated that "...certain stringent measures need to be taken to ensure that residents of the area do not travel closer to ill-health with each breath they take."The Quint reached out to Justice Kumar to talk about the 2015 order and its enforcement. His replies are awaited, and the article will be updated as and when he responds.Justice Kumar's order was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018, reinforcing its legal validity.Anumita Roychowdhury, Executive Director, Research and Advocacy at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), told The Quint that although the Delhi government began acting on the NGT order in 2019, meaningful enforcement only took shape in January 2022. That year, the Department of Transport deregistered all overage diesel and petrol vehicles and mandated that any such vehicle would be impounded if found on roads.“This was truly the first concrete effort by the transport department to implement the NGT order,” Roychowdhury noted.The enforcement drive continued through 2022 and 2023 but was soon challenged in the Delhi High Court. "In its ruling, the High Court directed the Delhi government to formulate a policy that would allow citizens to reclaim their impounded vehicles by paying a penalty and submitting a written undertaking that the vehicle would not be operated or parked in public spaces."Anumita RoychowdhuryIn 2024, the Delhi government issued detailed "Guidelines for Handling End of Life Vehicles in Public Places". Apart from allowing citizens to retrieve their impounded vehicles by paying a fine, it noted that such vehicles could only be kept in private garages or parking lots. It also identified registered scrapping facilities.These guidelines remained in force until October 2024, when the transport department issued a fresh notification introducing a fiscal strategy. The government began offering concessions on the motor vehicles tax and registration fees for new private and commercial vehicles, provided owners submitted proof of scrapping an old one. The aim was to encourage voluntary scrappage and promote cleaner vehicles.The CAQM's fuel ban was yet another enforcement tool to further weed out any deregistered vehicles still plying on the road.'As a Senior Citizen, Allow us an Extension to Keep Vehicles Beyond 15 Years'The blanket ban, once implemented, had been a subject of debate. But the proposal for the ban was introduced even prior to 2015. A year after the Supreme Court constituted the Environmental Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA), a body to address the rising air pollution and toxicity of diesel emissions in Delhi, it submitted a report advocating for a ban on diesel cars in Delhi. In its detailed report, the now-dismantled EPCA had highlighted how the "galloping numbers of diesel cars", fuelled by subsidised diesel prices, were negating past gains from converting public transport to cleaner fuels like CNG. It added that the diesel vehicles were contributing significantly to toxic particulate matter and nitrogen oxide pollution.Himani Jain, Senior Programme Lead (Mobility) at the Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW), told The Quint that a blanket ban offered key advantages in bringing down vehicular emissions in a city like Delhi."Some argue that the blanket ban is unfair, especially if their vehicle is well-maintained or has low usage. While there is some truth to this subjectivity, with over 2 crore people and nearly 1.56 crore vehicles registered to date. Yet, monitoring individual cases is resource-intensive, with the additional burden of a large number of vehicles entering Delhi for the movement of people and goods."Himani Jain"Policymakers recognise these nuances and choose practical solutions to serve the larger goals. This policy was amongst the first in India to give directions for the phasing out of the older and polluting fleet from Delhi," she added.Roychowdhury, however, argued, “A sweeping, generic age-based ban does not work in the long run. Such a strategy is neither feasible, sustainable, nor practical.”“It is more important to target the worst polluters. Studies show that a small number of vehicles, especially commercial ones that travel many more kilometers, are responsible for a disproportionately high share of emissions.”Anumita RoychowdhuryIs Delhi Just Moving Its Pollution Elsewhere?Although the scrapping was encouraged, experts pointed out to The Quint that overage vehicles are, more often than not, sold outside of Delhi in other cities and towns. According to Roychowdhury, this is "unfair" on other regions. By using the overage vehicles elsewhere, "you are just shifting the pollution somewhere else," she added.Jain, however, offered a different perspective. "Pollution levels in Delhi are much more intense, with a higher number and density of vehicles, thus greater vehicular pollution. In regions where vehicle density and consequent pollution are lower, older fleets may still continue for their roadworthiness and viable lifetime. Ultimately, Delhi’s priority is cleaning its air, so there is a need for a faster phase-out of older ICE vehicles and introducing cleaner vehicles.""At the end of the day, the Court upheld the ‘right to live’ higher as compared to the ‘right to trade’. One’s convenience, and even business or livelihood, cannot be at the cost of others’ lives and health."Himani JainNo Organ Spared: How Air Pollution Affects Every Organ in Your BodyWhat experts do agree on is the need to phase out old, polluting vehicles, especially diesel ones.BS-III and BS-IV vehicles refer to Bharat Stage emission standards, with the latter, implemented in 2017, mandating lower emissions compared to BS-III vehicles, and so on.“For clean air and public health, do we need to address emissions from old vehicles? The answer is yes,” said Roychowdhury. “Older vehicles, 10 or 15 years, were built to meet much weaker emission standards than the latest BS-VI norms introduced in 2020.”Emission standards have improved over time, making newer vehicles far cleaner. For instance, a 10-year-old diesel car likely meets BS-III norms, but compared to a BS-VI vehicle, it emits up to 11 times more pollutants.Moreover, vehicles pollute more as they age and accumulate usage.Roychowdhury explained, “This is why continuous renewal of the vehicle fleet is essential, which means older vehicles must be phased out and replaced with cleaner or zero-emission vehicles, to truly benefit from improved emission standards.”"This may not seem too significant for petrol vehicles, but it adds up substantially for diesel commercial vehicles that travel extensively," added IV Rao, Distinguished Fellow, Transport and Urban Governance, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).From an emissions standpoint, any vehicle older than 10 years falls at least two stages behind BS-VI standards and emits significantly higher levels of particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), both of which are linked to serious health risks, including lung cancer.Jain echoed this view, noting that this logic underpinned the blanket ban in the original NGT order."If we want cleaner BS-VI vehicles inducted faster in Delhi, we must phase out older BS-III and BS-IV vehicles, which emit more PM and NOx than BS-VI vehicles. The recent CAQM directive on EOL vehicles strengthens the monitoring of existing compliance,” she said.Moreover, she added that the commonly cited figure of 64 lakh deregistered vehicles still plying in Delhi is misleading. “The Vaahan dashboard records the number of vehicles registered in RTOs yearly. Often, people and businesses do not deregister their vehicles at scrapping or transferring/selling to another state. Vaahan data is often misinterpreted, for the number of vehicles running on the road.”“CEEW analysis suggests that in total, Delhi currently has approximately 52 lakh - 68 lakh vehicles that actively ply, and we estimate that between 83,000 to 4 lakh vehicles could have exceeded their regulated life and still be plying the roads. GNCTD data using 500 ANPR cameras at petrol pumps, detected close to 4.9 lakh cases, of which it is estimated that 2 to 3 lakh are unique EOL vehicles.”Himani Jain"But the problem is how to persuade a user who has maintained the vehicle well and doesn't have any issues with the vehicle from a user-point-of-view to scrap their vehicle and buy a new one?" Rao added.So, is there a better, more efficient alternative that effectively controls vehicular emissions, and is fairer to vehicle owners?Air Pollution Causing Dry, Itchy Eyes? Ophthalmologist on How to Protect Them “An effective approach is a strong emissions monitoring and enforcement system that can catch actual polluters in real time,” said Roychowdhury.She added that the age-based ban only works as a "stopgap" in the absence of robust systems, a reality in many developing countries. "If we want a sustainable, long-term solution, we need advanced and automated surveillance systems that can detect high-emitting vehicles on the road, rather than placing the burden on the user to go for testing,” she added. But can Delhi build a targeted regulation system supported by real-time surveillance, reliable emissions testing, and adequate infrastructure? It's going to take a long time.“Right now, the only emission testing programme available is the Pollution Under Control Certificate (PUCC), which measures limited parameters. A revised PUCC system shall also account for real-world driving conditions, standardisation of location and testing conditions, as these significantly affect emissions," said Jain.In fact, a 2017 audit by the Supreme Court into the PUCC programme revealed serious flaws in its credibility and enforcement. “That’s when the directive came to move beyond PUCC and implement remote sensing monitoring—a more advanced system of on-road emission testing,” Roychowdhury explained.Despite pilot programmes in a few cities, including Kolkata, this upgraded system has yet to be implemented widely across India, including in Delhi."it's high time we bring in a stronger fitness and roadworthiness testing system for private vehicles," she concluded.Video | Schools Shut Amid Flood Alert: How Climate Change Is Reshaping Childhood

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Explained: Can Fitness Tests of Cars Replace Age as Delhi’s New Standard?

When it comes to regulating the emissions, "it is more important to target the worst polluters," say experts.