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All 10-year-old diesel vehicles and 15-year-old petrol ones will be taken off the roads in the National Capital Region, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered on Tuesday.
Experts, however, warned that part of the public health benefit that would arise from the orders could be wiped out if vehicles replacing the ones that go off the road are also diesel variants, with the existing fuel quality standards.
The tribunal’s order covers light and heavy vehicles. The order was an upgrade of a previous one from December 2014 when the court banned all vehicles, both petrol and diesel, older than 15 years from plying on Delhi roads.
“We might mention that a number of countries in the world are in the process or have prohibited diesel vehicles or are in the process of doing away with them by imposing very heavy taxes. We have already noticed that certain stringent measures need to be taken to ensure that residents of the area do not travel closer to ill-health with each breath they take,” said the principle bench of the court, headed by NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar, reported news agencies.
“We direct all diesel vehicles, heavy or light, which are 10 years old will not be permitted on the roads of Delhi and NCR,” it directed.
The published orders of the NGT were not available online till the time of filing this report.
The Delhi government had estimated that the December 2014 order itself would take more than 2.9 million vehicles off the road. A ready estimate for the total number of vehicles that would now be banned in the entire NCR region is not publicly available at the moment.
The tribunal also gave 20 hours to the government and the agencies concerned to ensure that all entry points of Delhi have units to check pollution levels, weight and age of any vehicle entering Delhi.
According to experts diesel cars emit around three times more nitrous oxide than petrol vehicles and around three-six times more particulate matter.
But experts warned that if the new diesel vehicles replacing the banned ones continue to ply on the existing quality of diesel then the advantage gained from the tribunal order could be partially wiped out in time — just as the gains from introducing CNG in public transport were lost to the overall increase in the number of private vehicles on Delhi roads.
“The number of 10-year-old diesel vehicles in the entire NCR is not known, but is expected to be substantial. Removing them will give pollution reduction benefits. However, this benefit can be negated if additional measures are not taken to control dieselisation of the new car sales and bring clean diesel fuel and advanced emissions-control technologies that are possible only under Euro V and Euro VI standards,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director — Research and Advocacy at the Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based green think tank.
From April, northern India is provided Euro-IV level fuel and this is to be introduced all over the country by April 2016. The next upgrade of fuel quality at the moment is slated for 2021 when the country would transit to better quality Euro-V norms fuel. Then in 2024 it is slated to upgrade yet again to even better Euro-VI fuel quality.
The government of India told the court that the refineries are willing to look at leapfrogging and producing better quality EU-VI norms from 2020. But the fuel would produce less pollutants only if the vehicles too are mandated by the government to shift to advance technologies in tandem by 2020 — a move the auto industry has currently suggested could come at huge cost.
