Delhi Transport Department launches fresh crackdown on overage vehicles

The Delhi Transport Department on Friday launched a fresh round of crackdown on overage vehicles, an exercise that will continue till December to combat air pollution in the national capital, officials said on Friday.

The department has asked traffic police to deploy four teams in every municipal zone in coordination with its enforcement wing to impound diesel and petrol-run vehicles that are older than 10 and 15 years, respectively.

Similar action has also been launched against unregistered and unfit e-rickshaws across the city.

A total of 213 vehicles, including two-wheelers, cars, and e-rickshaws were impounded on Friday, officials said.

This is the second round of a city-wide crackdown on overage vehicles. In March last year, the department launched a drive to impound such vehicles. The drive continued for a few months.

According to the latest figure, more than 55 lakh overage vehicles have been de-registered so far in the national capital.

An official said that several teams of Delhi Traffic Police, Enforcement Wing of the Transport Department, MCD and other agencies will take action.

The official said the "end of life" vehicles will be impounded and directly sent to the scrapping yard if they are found plying on city roads or parked in public places.

According to the Transport Department's recent public notice, owners of overage vehicles have three options -- keep such vehicles in a private parking space owned by the individual, not in a shared parking space, obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to move the vehicle out of Delhi within one year of the vehicle's expiry date, or scrap the vehicle through a registered agency.

As the winter season approaches, when pollution levels typically spike, the drive is also part of a broader strategy to improve air quality and streamline vehicle registration across the capital, an official of the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) said.

On Friday, the government data showed that the major source of pollution in Delhi was the transport sector. Transport contributed 22.19 per cent to Delhi’s pollution levels till 12 pm on Friday.

The Decision Support System for Air Quality Management in Delhi indicated that the daily mean of local and non-local contributions to PM2.5 over the next four days will primarily come from the transport sector.

The Transport Department, in collaboration with traffic police, is deploying enforcement teams throughout the city’s 12 municipal zones.

These targeted zones include areas such as the Central Zone, City SP-Zone, Civil Lines, Karol Bagh, South Zone, Keshav Puram, Najafgarh, Narela, North and South Shahdara, Rohini, NDMC, and West Delhi.

Each MCD zone will have four traffic police teams working alongside two enforcement teams from the Transport Department, focusing on seizing vehicles that have surpassed their legal lifespan, another official said.

In 2018, the Supreme Court banned diesel and petrol vehicles older than 10 and 15 years, respectively, in Delhi. It added that the vehicles plying in violation of the order would be impounded.

A 2014 order from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) bars vehicles older than 15 years from being parked in public places.

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