No law to scrap 15-year-old diesel vehicles: Centre

NEW DELHI: There's nothing in the law on scrapping diesel vehicles more than 15 years old, the ministry of heavy industries says. The ministry has filed an affidavit in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to this effect, adding that the "forcible scrapping" of such vehicles may lead to "innumerable writ petitions by affected owners" in the courts.

The ministry's response was to a recent NGT order in the Vardhaman Kaushik case against Delhi's severe air pollution. A July 20 green tribunal order said diesel vehicles more than 15 years old and BS I or BS II-compliant must not be given a no-objection certificate ( NOC) for registration outside the NCR and should be junked.

The tribunal order also mentioned that 10 to 15-year-old vehicles plying in the NCR have to be de-registered. But they can be issued NOCs for registration elsewhere in the country.

The law, the affidavit says, allows the Centre to fix the age of vehicles, as specified in Section 59 of the Motor Vehicles (MV) Act. Unless these violate the MV Act, implementing the NGT order amounts to penalising owners "who have complied with the law of the land... There's already a mechanism to allow only those vehicles to ply that comply with requirements of a valid PUC".