End-of-life vehicles to be impounded in Delhi from tomorrow, owners will be penalised with up to ₹10,000 fine

It is going to be a tough time for the older vehicle owners in Delhi, as the end-of-life (EOL) vehicles in the national capital will be seized from July 1, Tuesday. According to directions issued by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) earlier, EOL vehicles detected at fuel stations or found parked at public places will be impounded. Besides that, the owners of the EOL four-wheelers will be slapped with a penalty of ₹10,000, while a fine amounting to ₹5,000 will be imposed on EOL two-wheeler owners, starting tomorrow.

The petrol vehicles older than 15 years and the diesel vehicles older than 10 years will be considered as EOL vehicles. While according to the CAQM directive, these vehicles will not be given fuel at any of the fuel stations in the national capital, they will be impounded as well if found in public places. In order to detect the EOL vehicles in Delhi, around 500 fuel stations in the city have installed Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras. The CAQM directions come amid poor progress in removing old, polluting vehicles from the NCR despite previous orders from the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

When a vehicle enters a fuel station, the ANPR camera will read the registration plate, and the data will be instantly checked with the central VAHAN database to detect the vehicle's age, fuel type and registration. The system will alert the fuel station staff not to refuel it if the system finds it as an EOL vehicle. This violation will be recorded and sent to enforcement agencies, who may then take action such as impounding and scrapping of the vehicle.

PTI has quoted Delhi Transport Commissioner Niharika Rai saying that any EOL vehicle detected at the fuel stations will be impounded on the spot. Further, to discourage the use of EOL vehicles, penalties have been set for owners of impounded vehicles. EOL four-wheeler owners will be fined ₹10,000, while those who own EOL two-wheelers will have to pay ₹5,000, along with towing and parking charges. Also, the owners must submit an undertaking stating that the vehicles will not be used or parked at any public place and will be removed from Delhi's jurisdiction.

The report stated that enforcement agencies will carry out regular drives to remove EOL vehicles from public places in Delhi and send daily reports to the environment department for submission to the CAQM. If an EOL vehicle is found on the road or parked in a public area, it will be seized and a seizure memo issued. All such impounded vehicles will be sent to a registered vehicle scrapping facility (RVSF). If the owner wants to move the vehicle out of Delhi, he or she has to get a no-objection certificate (NOC) within a year of the vehicle's expiry date.

Five other NCR districts to roll out this mechanism from November 1

While the Delhi government is all set to initiate this system from July 1 to counter the menacing air pollution issue in the city, five other high vehicle density districts of NCR adjoining Delhi will roll out the same mechanism from November 1.

These districts include Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar and Sonipat. The fuel stations in these districts will install the ANPR cameras for the same purpose, and this installation process is slated to be completed by October 31. The remaining NCR districts have been given time till March 31, 2026, to install the ANPR cameras, with fuel denial for EOL vehicles starting April 1, 2026.

Delhi has 62 lakh EOL vehicles, including 41 lakh two-wheelers

According to data shared by CAQM, Delhi currently has 62 lakh EOL vehicles, and 41 lakh of them are two-wheelers. The total number of EOL vehicles in the other NCR districts is around 44 lakh, and these are largely concentrated in the five high vehicle density cities mentioned above.

Meanwhile, CAQM is preparing to issue a fresh order to implement the ANPR-based EOL vehicle detection mechanism at Delhi's 156 entry points for such vehicles as well as for buses and other heavy goods vehicles.

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