The Government of Delhi has come up with a new rule with an “end of vehicle life” policy. The Draft Rules have been framed in order to implement the year 2014 order issued by the National Green Tribunal that such vehicles should not be allowed to ply on Delhi roads and should not even be parked in public spaces. If the rules are approved, vehicles older than 15 years will be impounded starting early next year. Owners having vehicles older than 15 years will have to give them away against an assured amount. The Government statistics say that Delhi has over 1 crore vehicles plying on roads out of which 37 lakh are older than 15 years. The Rules have been named as ‘Delhi Scrapping of Vehicles Rules 2018’ and under this, all vehicles that are older than 15 years will be sent to specific scarp dealers to get dismantled and the respective owners will be given a scrapping charge that has not been finalised yet.
Since long, the traffic police and transport department have been expressing their inability to seize older vehicles despite the NGT order due to the lack of the mechanism to dismantle such vehicles and the lack of space is also a hurdle. There is no rule at present to guide the police or the government as to what is to be done with the vehicles after they are impounded. The new Rules will create a mechanism to ensure proper disposal of old vehicles. This is going to be a first-of-its-kind policy in India. The Draft Rules also say that the owners of such vehicles are free to give away their vehicles to the scrap dealers against a fixed amount. The whole process will be online. The transport department will start issuing licenses to the scrap dealers who have at least 1,000 square yards of space in the non-residential areas of Delhi and have been certified by the Delhi Pollution Free Committee.
In case the vehicle owner does not give away his or her vehicle, such units will be impounded and the money will be credited to the Government account. In order to ensure that the scrapping will be done in a non-hazardous and safe environment, the licensed scrap dealers will have to get CCTV camera installed in their yards. Any junk vehicle found parked in public place shall be impounded and a communication will be sent to the registered owner, who will have to submit an undertaking for scrapping within a period of 15 days.
[Source: The Hindu BusinessLine]
