Delhi’s decision to ban diesel vehicles older than ten years, and petrol vehicles older than fifteen years, is not a climate victory – it is an unconscionable attack on citizens’ rights, economic stability, and common sense. Sold as an environmental move, it reeks of cronyism, governance failure, and opportunism.
First, the basics. When a citizen buys a car, they pay hefty road tax, registration fees, and more – all calculated on a presumed 15-year lifespan. In Delhi, however, a National Green Tribunal order from 2015, later upheld by the Supreme Court, now forces diesel vehicles off the road after tenyears. That’s one-third of their value destroyed overnight, with no refund for the remaining five years of road tax or registration.
Is there any logic in paying tax for 15 years only to be allowed to drive for 10? Where does the remainder go? Into a silent government exchequer, with no accountability and no recompense for the average middle-class family forced to scrap their well-maintained vehicles.
Treating the Root Cause
If pollution is truly the concern, the government must first shut down fraudulent PUC centres issuing clean certificates without testing. A Pollution Under Control certificate means precisely that: the vehicle’s emissions are within prescribed norms. If an old diesel Innova returns a clean PUC, why is it banned while a newer SUV with worse real-world emissions is allowed to ply simply because it’s newer?
The hypocrisy extends further. Government-owned diesel buses, ancient trucks used for municipal work, and dusty state transport vehicles continue to pollute unchallenged. Are private citizens soft targets while government departments remain sacred cows?
Proponents argue that the order was issued by courts, but policy framing is an administrative responsibility. Courts can adjudicate legality but cannot set arbitrary age-based bans in a vacuum. Environmental governance must be based on real data – yet no data is publicly shared on the emissions of these older vehicles. Where is the sampling across age groups to prove that ten-year-old diesel cars are necessarily polluting more than eight-year-old diesel trucks or two-year-old poorly maintained SUVs?
Instead of implementing stricter and corruption-free PUC regimes, improving last-mile public transport, and incentivising EV adoption meaningfully, Delhi has chosen the easiest route – coercion. The ruling devastates families that purchased diesel vehicles only a few years ago, some even on long-term loans. They now have to scrap vehicles prematurely, bearing both financial loss and interest burdens without any relief.
And there is a deeper, darker possibility: that this decision is guided by lobbying from the car industry eager to push new vehicle sales under the garb of environmentalism. It is no secret that powerful automakers have lobbied globally for scrappage incentives to boost sales. In India, there is no compensation. There is only forced obsolescence in the name of clean air. And Delhi is simply a test bed; if there is no resistance to this, expect it to roll out elsewhere too.
India’s Policy Paradox
Consider the policy paradox. In the UK, there is no age-based ban as long as a vehicle passes its annual MOT test, proving it is roadworthy and non-polluting. India, too, has PUC norms – but the government chooses not to enforce them rigorously, preferring instead to carpet-bomb entire age cohorts of vehicles irrespective of their condition.
The middle class is worst affected. For many families, owning a car is a dream achieved after years of savings. They maintain it well, use it judiciously, and keep it insured, only to be told by an opaque system that it is worthless after a decade. And if they do want to retain the vehicle, they must go through the harrowing process of transferring it to another state (if accepted) or selling it at scrap value.
There is no discussion of subsidies, no extension or conditional exemptions, and no clarity on scrappage policy implementation. Even the government’s vehicle scrapping policy remains riddled with bureaucratic hurdles, paperwork, and insufficient scrappage infrastructure to handle this influx. Further, no public data has been released showing the marginal pollution reduction achieved by scrapping a well-maintained 10-year-old diesel vehicle versus the lifecycle pollution cost of producing a brand-new car to replace it.
This policy is not green. It is performative. It shifts pollution elsewhere in the supply chain while devastating citizens’ wealth and ignoring systemic failures.
The Green Shoots of Change
If the government truly wants to be pro-environment, it must:
- Conduct and publish real-world emissions sampling across vehicle age groups to prove the necessity of bans.
- Refund unutilised road tax proportionately to vehicle owners forced to scrap early.
- Strengthen and clean up PUC certification to ensure only actual polluters are removed from roads.
- Offer transition subsidies, lower-interest EV loans, or buyback schemes to mitigate economic hardship.
- Apply the same rules to government vehicles to avoid hypocrisy and prove policy integrity.
Until these steps are taken, the ban will remain what it currently is: an asinine, draconian, and arbitrary decision, driven not by a desire for clean air, but by a toxic mix of judicial activism, bureaucratic laziness, and perhaps corporate lobbying that fills the coffers of industry and the exchequer.
Delhi deserves clean air – but not at the cost of logic, fairness, and the people that call it home.
