All diesel vehicles older than 10 years in Delhi to be deregistered: All details

Delhi government has announced that it will deregister all diesel vehicles that complete 10 years on January 1, 2022. The move comes in compliance with the National Green Tribunal's (NGT) directions. These deregistered diesel vehicles will be issued no objection certificates (NOC), so that they can be re-registered in other places.

However, the Delhi transport department has said that no NOC will be issued to diesel vehicles that have completed 15 years or more. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) earlier issued directions relating to restrictions on registration and plying of diesel vehicles that are more than 10 years old and petrol vehicles more than 15 years old in the Delhi- NCR. The July 2016 directive was issued in order to reduce the vehicular pollution level in the national capital.

The transport department's statement says that complying with the NGT order, the department will first deregister all the elligible diesel vehicles in Delhi on 1st January next year, which have completed or would be completing 10 years on that date. It also said that NOC for diesel vehicles that are 10 years old, and petrol vehicles that are 15 years old, can be issued for any place in the country. However, this will be the subject to condition that NOC will not be issued for the places which are identified by states as restricted area for re-registration of such vehicles.

The Delhi transport department order also said that the owners of such diesel vehicles will have the option to convert their 10-year-old diesel or 15-year-old petrol vehicles to electric ones if they want to continue using them. Just a few weeks ago, Delhi government announced that it will allow retrofitment of old diesel and petrol vehicles with EV kit.

The affected vehicle owners can retrofit such old petrol or diesel vehicles with empanelled electric kits through agencies that are approved by the Delhi transport department. In other cases, only option left for the vehicle owners will be to scrap the old vehicles. The Delhi transport department and Delhi traffic police teams are already impounding such old vehicles and sending them for scrapping by authorised vendors.