Dear Signers,

At the outset, I thank you all so much for your continuing support. 

The Delhi Transport Department has for quite some time been alleged to have been forcibly seizing and scrapping several vehicles perceived as ‘end-of-life’ vehicles parked or plying in Delhi-NCR, i.e., vehicles over the age threshold of 15 years for petrol vehicles and 10 years for diesel vehicles since first registrations. 

Click here to share this petition on Twitter. Help this petition get to 1,00,000 signatures so that senior citizens can get an exemption from the ban in Delhi-NCR on 10-year-old diesel and 15-year-old petrol vehicles. Click here to share this petition on WhatsApp. 

Thanks to an Aug 22nd verdict of the Delhi High Court, Delhi’s Transport Minister showed no further delay in temporarily halting the forcible confiscation and reviewing the decision and as per sections of media reports, has reportedly asked the Principal Secretary-cum-Commissioner - Transport to stop the exercise until they frame a policy on scrapping such overaged vehicles.

On behalf of all of my 56,000 signatory supporters on this platform, I thank the Honourable Delhi High Court for this landmark dispensation and the Delhi Transport Minister for having offered some ray of hope of a little more compassionate handling of the multiple complex issues and concerns of the vehicle owners affected that all of us by now, must be surely fully abreast of.

Although, at 50,000+, our petition had already reached quite a sizeable number to trigger intervention by any responsive officialdom, I still feel we need to push it further not as much for the numbers who support it but more for this vital matter to reach each and every senior citizen family still left out in the NCR of Delhi for their rationale support and integration with this common cause, whether already affected or likely to be affected in the coming residual years of their lives.

As such, I am sharing here a link to my petition once again with a request to support it and also keep on sharing it further on Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, EMails, and any other similar personal social platforms available for promotion of such social causes of common interest and for creating all-round awareness on all such critical issues affecting the common masses.

The Delhi Transport Department launched its drive to impound such overaged vehicles on March 3, 2023. So far, over 10,000 vehicles are reported to have been impounded already. ( A TOI report after the HC Verdict had put this figure at 14,000 already).

Now that the Delhi Government is readying to come up with a policy for scrapping overaged or end-of-life vehicles, I urgently request all the concerned authorities addressing this matter to:

i) As a first positive step, exempt all senior citizens from the scrappage policy for their old vehicles so long as these are PUC fit and completely roadworthy and have not crossed the Registered life period of 20 years in case of petrol and 15 years in case of Diesel vehicles, as provisioned in the Central Motor Vehicles Act.

ii) Provide adequate compensation to all senior citizens whose vehicles have already been scrapped based solely upon the end-of-life criterion of 15 and 10 years but were roadworthy and PUC fit on the day of surrender or impounding.

iii) Provide adequate compensation to all senior citizens who were thus compelled, rather coerced to sell off their PUC fit and roadworthy vehicles outside of NCR of Delhi in a hurry in acute distress in the 14th to 15th years of registrations of such vehicles

iv) Involve select members of civil society in a high-level committee to vet the new policy before its announcement and for proposing detailed rules and regulations for its enforcement in the future so that such massive imbroglios are avoided and neither the citizens nor the Honourable Courts are overburdened with extra workloads for such long drawn reviews of indifferent handling of such public matters. 

The Government and the courts must prescribe strict fitness tests for all ageing vehicles, and vehicles failing the fitness tests, only should be scrapped even if just a year old, What to talk of 15 or 10 years! A blanket policy of scrapping vehicles based only on their age is unjust and unscientific,” a citizen had voiced in the Hindustan Times. Several affected and aggrieved citizens participating live in an ongoing almost a month-long campaign on Mirror Now, a very popular business channel of the leading Times of India Group have all also voiced similar concerns.

It may be recalled here that the Delhi Government had earlier also said that it would appeal in Court the ban imposed by the National Green Tribunal on 10-year-old diesel and 15-year-old petrol vehicles, which doesn’t include provisions for fitness testing and pollution checks. This ban in Delhi-NCR is at variance with the national policy, which allows petrol vehicles to be used for 20 years and diesel vehicles for 15 years, subject to mandatory pollution checks.

No one knows whether the Delhi Government did appeal against the NGT ban on overaged vehicles as the drive for impounding these vehicles was certainly in keeping with the ban imposed by the NGT. 

Please continue supporting this appeal already signed by 56,000 affected and concerned citizens. Please click here to share this petition on all social media platforms including Twitter, tagging the Delhi Transport Minister and the Union Transport Minister, so they remain constantly alerted about how a blanket ban on overaged vehicles in Delhi-NCR can continue causing great distress to lakhs of senior citizens who’d be forced to spend a huge sum of money in their twilight years to buy another car or retrofit their existing ones with electric/CNG kits like the few who unavoidably already had to!