Need 'Hum Do Hamare Do' for cars to make Delhi liveable: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: With the number of vehicles in the national capital crossing the one crore mark and increasing by over seven lakh every year, the Supreme Court on Friday said there should a family planning policy like 'Hum Do Hamare Do' to stop people from buying multiple cars.

A bench of Arun Mishra and Deepak Gupta expressed concern over Delhi residents owning multiple cars, resulting in congestion on roads and pollution. It said the number of cars and other vehicles in the city needed to be brought down to make Delhi a liveable place.

"It is fine to have multiple cars in a family where there are many earning members but now there are instances where one person has five or more cars. Neighbourhood relationships are nowadays getting destroyed due to growing vehicle population as people keep fighting for parking space in colonies. Can't we have a family planning policy for cars like 'Hum Do Hamare Do'?" the bench asked.

The court was hearing an application filed by Bajaj Auto seeking removal of the cap on autorickshaws in the city which the SC had fixed at one lakh. It claimed that BS-VI compliant autorickshaws were less polluting and the curb should be removed as it would strengthen the public transport system.

Supporting the company's plea, the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority told the court that increase in the number of three-wheelers would help control pollution as people would be discouraged to buy cars.

Referring to the EPCA report, advocate Aparajita Singh said the per-capita emission of public transport vehicles was lower than private vehicles and they also travelled longer distances every day. "It is estimated that while two-wheelers and cars travel some 50-60 km per day on an average, three-wheelers travel 120 km/day, buses 210 km/day and taxis like Ola and Uber some 400 km/day. The cap on registration of three-wheelers may be removed immediately provided that the vehicles are BS-VI CNG/petrol/LPG etc or battery operated," the report said.

The EPCA told the court that the situation was worse in NCR cities of Faridabad, Noida and Gurgaon which were witnessing proliferation of unregistered vehicles for public transport running on polluting fuel due to the cap on number of three-wheelers. It said there were around three lakh registered three-wheelers in the NCR, including Delhi, of which 84,000 were diesel and 54,000 were fuelled by CNG. The rest were powered by petrol or duel-fuel (CNG-petrol).

The court, however, expressed reluctance to remove the cap and said it may lead to a flood of autorickshaws on the roads. "Other vehicles also require space. Only autos cannot run on the roads. It is not easy and feasible to lift the ban all of a sudden. The number can be increased as per the needs of a growing city but there has to be some empirical data to justify raising the cap," it said.

In 1997, the Supreme Court had put a cap of 82,138 on the number of three-wheelers in Delhi and had subsequently raised it to one lakh.