Government exploring dedicated scrapyard for older vehicles: Nitin Gadkari

MUMBAI: The ministry of road transport and highways is planning to set up two vehicle scrapyards in the southern and western part of India, said Nitin Gadkari, Union minister of road, transport and highways, in Mumbai last week.

This is significant in the backdrop of a recent decision by the National Green Tribunal to ban diesel-run vehicles older than 10 years in Delhi, since once this is enforced, hundreds of thousands of vehicles will be reduced to scrap, which could have implications for the environment.

Gadkari emphasised that scrappage is an important issue, and one has to find ways of how and where to treat a ‘scrapped’ vehicle. "We are trying to create a zone, where the scrapping and processing of vehicles can be done. These may come up at the ports on the outskirts of Chennai and in the west, preferably at Kandla," he said.

The minister said the process is at a very early stage and details will emerge in due course.

This announcement has been very encouraging for the automotive industry, which has been clamouring for a scrappage scheme to create demand in the market, which has been sluggish for months, if not years.

People close to the transport ministry say that one of the main reasons for non-implementation of incentive schemes through scrappage in line with cash-forclunkers programme followed by Europe was the lack of scrappage infrastructure in the country.

On the enforcement of the tribunal’s order, Gadkari said his ministry is appealing to the Supreme Court as the order (to ban diesel vehicles over 10 years) cannot be implemented within two weeks.

"We are with the decision of NGT in spirit, but this cannot be adhered to in two weeks. There are a lot of people who have bought vehicles on loan, they need to be given time, we have told the court that we will come out with the regulation within six months," Gadkari explained.

The minister also said that he will try and bring in the new Motor Vehicles Act in the upcoming session of the Parliament, which will outline the new norms of motor vehicles in India and the OEM (original equipment manufacturers) and dealers will have to find a way to implement it.

Reviewing the performance of his ministry, Gadkari said, "When we came into power the pace of road construction was 2 km per day, by the end of March, we had taken it up to 12 km per day; by May it will go up to 14 km per day and we want to take it to 30 km per day by next May."