Dear signers,
I’ve been making a case that senior citizens should be exempted from Delhi-NCR’s car scrapping rules. However, there are many others who are also arguing against the policy in its entirety
Click on this link to share this petition on WhatsApp. https://cutt.ly/nFtcEiT. Help us get to 60,000 signatures to ensure that the authorities listen to our demands. Click here to share it on Twitter tagging the right decision makers.
These people are questioning the arbitrary logic that 10-year-old diesel vehicles and 15-year-old petrol vehicles are ‘overage’ and are not allowed to ply on the roads.
It is worth noting that the Centre’s rules for restricting the use of ‘overage’ vehicles differ substantially from the rules in force in Delhi-NCR.
As per the Centre’s car scrappage policy, 15-year-old commercial vehicles and 20-year-old personal vehicles have to be scrapped, only if they fail an automated fitness test.
Unlike the rules in Delhi-NCR, the Centre’s rules also don’t classify vehicles based on their fuel type and further allow ‘old’ vehicles to continue in use subject to these passing fitness tests. The rules in Delhi-NCR don’t permit such fitness tests too.
In another petition, Sumit Dey argues the same, asking for the option of fitness testing for 15-year-old vehicles. “Even a new vehicle less than 3 years old can pollute if not maintained properly. So we should be focusing on strict fitness inspection rather than bulk vehicle scrapping,” he writes.
Similarly, Deepak Uppal argues that he had bought his luxury diesel car in 2017, before the 10-year rule for diesel vehicles came into force in Delhi-NCR.
“As long as exhaust emitted from such cars are within the acceptable limits, they should be allowed to ply in Delhi-NCR for 15 years like in other states. After 15 years, based on fitness certification the validity may be considered for extension of validity for additional 5 years (20 years from the date of registration), as approved in several other states,” he writes in his petition.
In another petition, Manoj Matta talks about his personal vehicle being off the road for two years amid the Covid pandemic. “People like me were bleeding from nose due to no income and still retaining our years old staff by paying them salaries from our savings so that they could survive though that should have been government's responsibility as tourism and hospitality sector was the worst hit…” This is just as true for all senior citizens too. In old age just paying for insurances, cleaning services; wherever they could afford to, to keep employment of cleaners going in COVID times that just did not permit almost any drives out.
“How our judiciary or officials sitting in NGT can compare a private well maintained vehicle which has hardly been driven for 65,000 km in 10 years vs. commercial vehicles which are driven over 1 lac km in 3 years itself?” Matta writes in his petition.
I urge you to continue supporting my petition. Click here to share it on Twitter tagging the right decision makers. It is important to mention here that the car scrapping rules in Delhi-NCR came into force in 2018 based on the directions of the National Green Tribunal and a Supreme Court directive enforcing the same. Sometime back, it was reported that the Delhi government was considering approaching the Supreme Court to ask for a review of the rules. We need to try and urge the Delhi Transport Ministers and the Union Transport Minister to approach either the NGT or the SC, asking for a possible review of these rules, so that a relaxation for senior citizens may be accommodated in the existing policy regime.
Tejinder Bedi