Blanket age-based ban on vehicles is not sustainable: Need a combination of measures

On July 1, 2025, the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi implemented ‘No fuel for 15 years old petrol and 10 years old diesel vehicles’ in compliance with the mandate from the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM). Within two days of its implementation, the city government, facing public ire, sent a missive to the CAQM asking to put this programme on hold, citing ‘operational and infrastructural challenges’ as the reasons.

This “no fuel” policy for overage vehicles is a strategy to implement the direction from the National Green Tribunal in 2015 that was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018. Consequently, about 6.2 million vehicles were identified and deregistered as end-of-life vehicles (ELV). 

When the impounding of these vehicles was challenged, the High Court in August 2023 directed the government to formulate a policy allowing citizens to reclaim their vehicles after paying the penalty and providing a written undertaking for not operating them within the city.

Thereafter, the Delhi government issued the “Guidelines for Handling End of Life Vehicle in Public Places, 2024” allowing residents to retrieve impounded ELVs by paying a fine and submitting an undertaking that the vehicles will not be driven within Delhi and will be parked in private parking spaces. Enforcement agencies are authorised to remove such ELVs from public spaces for scrapping. Registered Vehicle Scrapping Facilities (RVSF) have been identified. 

In October 2024, the Delhi transport department further notified concessions in the Motor Vehicles Tax on the registration of new transport and non-transport vehicles, when an old vehicle is scrapped. This will require a 'Certificate of Deposit' from a registered vehicle scrapping facility to avail the benefit. The concession is linked to the scrap value and is capped at 50 per cent of that value. This aims to promote voluntary scrappage and the adoption of cleaner vehicles.

Finally in April 2025, the CAQM mandated no fuel for over age vehicles in Delhi and NCR including Delhi,Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar and Sonipat as per a specified timeline. 

The critical question that is being asked today is why it is necessary to address old vehicles and whether a sweeping and blanket age-based ban the answer.

Insidious link between old vehicles & toxic air 

After taking several actions to control vehicular pollution, including advancement in emissions standards, moving public transport and commercial transport to CNG, growing electrification of fleet and restrictions on truck entry, the focus is on the large fleet of old and ageing vehicles. 

The older vintages were originally designed to emit several times more pollution than the vehicles complying with the current Bharat Stage VI (BSVI) emissions standards. Simply put, the particulate matter (PM) emissions standard for a BS III diesel car that is more than 10 year old in Delhi, is 11 times more polluting than the limit value of the current BS VI standard. Similarly, a very old heavy-duty diesel truck meeting BS I norms can spew 36 times more PM compared to BS VI-compliant trucks.

With age and wear and tear, their emissions deteriorate. The ongoing pollution under control certificate programme (PUC), which is a simple test of idle engine emissions, has limitations in accurately measuring a range of key pollutants during vehicle acceleration and at different speeds that have bearing on the real world emissions. 

It is also evident that usually a smaller number of vehicles on the road are responsible for disproportionately high emissions. If a rigorous emissions monitoring system can identify these and remove them from roads, a substantial part of the problem can be addressed. For instance, a national estimate by the International Council on Clean Transportation shows that pre-2003 vehicles constituted less than 20 per cent of the total vehicles but accounted for nearly half of all vehicular particulate emissions and a third of nitrogen oxide emissions in 2011. The accumulating old fleet can thus lock-in enormous  pollution.

A joint report by the International Energy Agency and Niti Aayog has stated that replacement of freight trucks, which fail the test, could avoid up to 17 per cent of NOX and 11 per cent PM2.5 emissions from trucks nationally, if replaced by trucks that are BS-VI compliant.

Also, ill-maintained and malfunctioning vehicles can be found in any age group of vehicles that requires weeding out. 

Moreover, scrappage and recycling of end-of-life vehicles (ELV) and recovery of critical resources is necessary for material security. According to the IEA and Niti Aayog report, this can reduce raw material costs by up to 40 per cent. But the recovery rates from ELVs in India are estimated at 70-75 per cent, compared to the global benchmark of 85-95 per cent. As India is expanding its scrappage infrastructure, identification of ELVs and full recovery will become critical. 

Strategy should go beyond generic ban

There is no doubt about the clean air benefits of fleet renewal. However, this cannot be addressed only with a blanket age-based ban. Fleet renewal needs to be based on the merits of fitness, maintenance, and emissions performance of vehicles while targeted age based bans are complimentary. This combined system needs to be put in place to identify unfit vehicles, highly polluting vehicles and ELVs that are past their useful life on the road. 

Already the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), in 2021, has notified the regulatory framework for scrappage that also defines ELVs to include vehicles without valid registration or declared unfit through automated testing centres (ATS).

Fitness testing of commercials in the ATS is mandatory for heavy, medium goods vehicles / passenger motor vehicles for identification of ELVs though its implementation has been delayed due to an inadequate number of ATS in the country. For private vehicles, fitness tests are needed after 15 years. 

It is important for Delhi to ensure that all commercial vehicles go for mandatory fitness tests in its advanced testing centre. However, the private vehicles require improved ELV criteria and much stronger emissions surveillance. 

Overall, advanced remote sensing monitoring of on-road emissions is needed to overcome the limitation of the PUC programme. Emission monitoring machines placed by the roadside can measure emissions remotely from moving vehicles on the road to efficiently identify the worst polluters. Delhi has already conducted two pilot programmes. The Supreme Court of India has also directed both MoRTH and Delhi government in 2018 to implement this programme. But the central rules — the Automotive Indian Standards 170 — need to be notified immediately to implement this.

The scrappage policy can apply age bans selectively to prioritise old vehicle segments, such as old heavy-duty diesel trucks and commercial vehicles, and also the other worst polluters for a targeted ban.

Scrappage and retiring of the oldest and most polluting vehicles need to be enabled with fiscal incentives to address the financial barriers to new vehicle purchases or access to affordable credits, especially for small operators. In the commercial segments, it is also possible to do demand aggregation to reduce costs — as the case may be.

While the MoRTH policy has provided for a tax concession framework to incentivise voluntary scrapping of transport and non-transport vehicles the state governments can take this forward to further build on this. Delhi has begun this process with scrappage incentives.

This can be further developed and combined with buyback schemes by the vehicle manufacturers. Delhi has already created dedicated funds from the environment compensation charge and pollution cess on diesel trucks, big diesel cars and diesel fuel. These can be leveraged for supporting fiscal incentives. 

Such incentives can also be strategically linked with replacement vehicles that are compliant with the current BSVI emissions standards and electric vehicles, to maximise emission gains.

Clearly, a combination of strategies, including merits of fitness, emissions performance, requirement of multiple testing of older vehicles and selective bans with incentives and disincentives are the alternatives to a blanket and a generic age-based ban.

But it is also important to underscore that the government will have to upscale and advance the emissions monitoring system itself to effectively identify the ELVs. This requires time-bound infrastructure development for advanced inspection and testing with stringent and transparent oversight and accountability, smart on-road remote sensing monitoring and strong legal compliance, with disclosure of list of ELVs and unfit vehicles. 

Currently, the ability to identify the ELVs either through PUC or ATS nation-wide is not strong enough. It is evident from the VAHAN database of MoRTH, that as of July 2025, out of 870,000 vehicles tested in the ATS nationally, only 304 vehicles have been officially declared as ELVs. 

If the blanket ban has to go, stringency of the inspection, smart monitoring of emissions performance and surveillance has to get much stronger to catch the worst polluters and ELVs.   

The spotlight

Even while addressing emissions from the older vehicles, it is necessary to accelerate efforts to massively augment public transport and mobility systems, to provide more options for mobility to the people. At the same time, it is important to enforce vehicle restraint measures like parking management area plans, with increased parking pricing, and low emissions zones, to restrain personal vehicle usage. Only this can help to build public support for inconvenient decisions around the polluting vehicles. 

(With inputs from Shambhavi Shukla)