On July 1, the Delhi government undertook a significant measure to tackle air pollution: it banned fuel stations from selling fuel to diesel vehicles that were more than ten years old and petrol vehicles that were more than 15 years old.
Vehicular emissions are one of the leading causes of air pollution in Delhi through the year. They can contribute between one-third and two-thirds of the capital’s toxic air, a 2018 analysis showed.
The government’s move was based on a “directive order” issued by the Commission for Air Quality Management in April. The commission is a statutory body established by the Union environment ministry to manage the air quality of the National Capital Region and its adjoining areas.
To identify such “end-of-life” vehicles, automated camera systems were installed in 498 petrol stations in Delhi to scan the number plates of vehicles that entered – if any was found to be above the age limit, or to not possess a pollution under control certificate, the station was to deny it fuel. Authorities also cracked down on overage vehicles: across the city, 87 such vehicles were impounded and 176 notices were issued to owners of others.
But these apparently decisive moves belied considerable confusion over strategy and policy within the government.
This became apparent just three days later on July 3, when the Delhi government asked the commission to reconsider its guidelines because it was facing challenges in implementing the ban: perhaps most significantly, faulty camera systems were often erroneously flagging newer cars.
Delhi’s chief minister, Rekha Gupta, posted on X that the move was “adversely affecting the daily lives and livelihoods of millions of families”.
After deliberations between Delhi government and the Commission for Air Quality Management, the commission on July 8 decided to “partially amend” its earlier instructions, and instead direct that the fuel ban be activated from November 1 onwards in five “high vehicle density districts” – Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar and Sonipat. From April 2026, the ban will extend to the rest of the National Capital Region.
Even as the ban is set to return, experts argue that rather than imposing blanket bans, a more targeted approach to removing polluting vehicles from the streets would be more effective, and easier to implement on a large scale.
“Older vehicles do require action, but a standalone ban dependent on just age alone is concerning,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of research and advocacy at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.
The organisation has for long argued that drastic measures are needed to reduce the number of vehicles on city roads.
But Roychowdhury argued that the ban should not merely be based on age, but on “the actual emission performance of the vehicles”. While generally older vehicles do pollute more, she explained, newer vehicles can also be significantly polluting because of technical malfunctions or poor maintenance. “Identifying the worst polluters should be the criteria to declare an end-of-life vehicle,” she said.
The rationale
The current ban on refuelling has its roots in a 2015 order by the National Green Tribunal, which directed that end-of-life vehicles not be permitted to ply in the National Capital Region.
Three years later, in October 2018, after examining a report on the matter by the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, the Supreme Court issued an order that reiterated the tribunal’s ban.
But the government did not implement the ban in the years that followed. In January 2024, a union government committee of secretaries – a term for an inter-ministerial committee formed to discuss specific kinds of matters and proposals – remarked in a meeting that there was “very slow progress in this context.”
Experts had also begun pointing out that these older vehicles needed to be replaced with new ones that followed Bharat Stage-VI, or BS-6 emission standards. The ministry of road transport and highways introduced these standards in April 2020 – the engines of vehicles that adhered to these standards would emit significantly lower levels of pollutants. According to the ministry’s notification, all vehicles manufactured after April 2020 would have to meet these standards.
But vehicles manufactured prior to 2020 are still on the country’s streets – currently, the vehicular fleet is dominated by those that follow older BS III and BS IV standards. “The challenge is to accelerate fleet renewal based on the current BS VI standard in the coming decade,” a report by the Centre for Science and Environment said.
In its April letter, the commission estimated that Delhi had more than 62 lakh overage vehicles – the highest number among National Capital Region territories and adjoining regions. In comparison, it estimated that Haryana had 27 lakh such vehicles, Uttar Pradesh had around 12 lakh, and Rajasthan around 6 lakh.
In the same letter, the commission stated that the ban on overage vehicles should be implemented starting from July 1.
The commission also recommended that the administration run checks on vehicles parked in public spaces and impound those that were found to be overage. Owners could reclaim them by paying a penalty of Rs 10,000 for a four-wheeler and Rs 5,000 for a two-wheeler, and providing an undertaking that the vehicle would be removed from the national capital region.
But some experts have arrived at much lower estimates of the number of old vehicles in Delhi, and explained that communicating this information to the public would significantly increase support for the implementation.
Delhi-based think-tank Council for Energy, Environment and Water, for instance, ran calculations based on existing research that estimate how long vehicles are typically used for, and concluded that of the 1.5 crore vehicles registered in the city in the last few decades, only between 83,000 and 4 lakh overage vehicles remained.
“Most older vehicles have either found new homes in other states or have been informally scrapped,” said Karthik Ganesan, director of strategic partnerships at the council.
He added, “The directive must be supported by studies that help attribute impact and establish drawbacks and effectiveness, which can make a case for such interventions nationwide.”
Defining an “end-of-life” vehicle
Delhi surpasses all other Indian cities with 1.18 crore vehicles on the road, over 90% of which are two-wheelers and cars.
But a comparison of emissions of diesel trucks and personal cars shows why targeting vehicles based on actual emissions was crucial to managing the problem.
A 2024 study by the Real Urban Emissions Initiative analysed emissions by a range of vehicles and found that as cars aged, they emitted increasing amounts of most pollutants, such as nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide. The increase in emissions of these substances between new cars and those that were more than ten years old ranged from around 2.6 times to more than 5.3 times.
In contrast, the study found that with buses, emissions typically peaked in vehicles that were either between three and six years old or between six and ten years old. The increase in emissions of these substances ranged from more than eight times to more than 33 times.
Broadly, the Real Urban Emission Initiative study found that commercial vehicles like light goods vehicles, taxis, three-wheelers and buses “generally exhibited higher emission levels” than personal vehicles and two-wheelers.
But this did not mean that personal vehicle ownership should be promoted, Ganesan cautioned. Ultimately, he said, “The effort needs to also go beyond and eventually deter private transport and make it convenient for people to rely on public transport.”
Roychowdhury argued that there was an onus on the government to “improve the surveillance system” to more precisely identify the most polluting vehicles. Currently, a mandatory pollution under control certificate is the only such check on vehicular emission levels. Roychowdhury argued that this method is insufficient, since it does not capture how the emissions on vehicles vary with driving patterns and different speeds.
Moreover, media reports from around the National Capital Region revealed that testing centres often issue pollution under control certificates even to unfit vehicles in exchange for bribes as small as Rs 50. “There is a need to have more rigorous centres and accountability” for pollution certificate, Roychowdhury said.
Towards a step in that direction, the Delhi government has begun work on pilot testing a programme to conduct remote-sensing monitoring of vehicular emissions using machines installed by the sides of roads. If a vehicle emission is detected as being above the prescribed limit, authorities can penalise it immediately.
Incentivising scrapping
In October last year, the Delhi government’s transport department also introduced financial incentives to encourage vehicle owners to scrap older vehicles. For those who scrapped old “non-transport vehicles” and purchased new ones that ran on petrol, CNG or LPG, the government offered a 20% concession on motor vehicle tax, which vehicle owners have to pay while registering a new vehicle – similarly, those who bought new diesel vehicles were offered a 15% concession on this tax.
A similar concession on the tax was available for “transport vehicles” – 15% for non-diesel new vehicles and 10% for diesel ones.
Roychowdhury described this as a “good step forward” and added that it would become clearer with time how effective the incentive was and what fine tuning it might need.
But Ganesan argued that voluntary scrapping would only be effective if states were better coordinated with each other. In a recent analysis, he noted that vehicles that become overage in Delhi “can re-register in other parts of the country, possibly even without proving their ‘fitness’”. Only when states coordinate, he argued in the analysis, can they ensure that “leakages” of such overage vehicles do not happen from “one jurisdiction to another”.
Other cities and states have also implemented strategies to tackle vehicular pollution. Some, including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka have introduced a “green tax” on old vehicles as a way to discourage their use. These taxes, levied on vehicles more than 15 years old at the time their fitness certificate is renewed, largely range between Rs 200 and Rs 1,000 for different categories. Only Maharashtra levies significantly higher taxes – for instance, the owner of a petrol car that is more than 15 years old has to pay a green tax of Rs 3,000.
Experts believe that though this strategy can help, the amounts levied in most cases may be too small. Such taxes “would have to be much higher for a person to rethink continuing using his vehicle or would have to be charged based on usage”, said Ganesan.
Some regions have also tried bans on vehicles. In 2003, Lucknow began phasing out older vehicles, while in 2008, the Kolkata High Court capped the age of commercial vehicles at 15 years.
Kolkata’s experience is revealing of one problem with the strategy. This year, more than 15 years after the ban was implemented, the policy had to be modified in the face of numerous complaints from bus associations that they would face economic losses because their vehicles were at risk of being arbitrarily deregistered because of their age.
Now, vehicles over 15 years old have to undergo a mandatory biannual fitness and emission test – only if they are found to be in poor mechanical or environmental health are they declared unfit and taken off the road.
