With the Supreme Court upholding the petition of the NGT, expect all major cities to follow with the ban of old vehicles in India.
April 2015 is certainly the decisive month for what is called one of the major shifts in the recent history of the Indian automobile industry. The country has finally awakened from what it should have done a few years ago; nevertheless things are moving in a much faster way than anticipated. Just a couple of weeks ago, The National Green Tribunal (NGT) passed on an executive order sighting ban on all diesel vehicles which are older than 10 years and petrol vehicles older than 15 years from entering the NCR region, a desperate attempt to improve the air quality of the National Capital Region (read HERE). But as soon as the order was passed, Vishal Jagdanad, a lawyer filed a petition stating that NGT had no authority to impose the ban.
The petition challenge was taken by the Supreme Court today. Post the arguments, the plea was rejected and the Supreme Court upheld the order of the tribunal. The bench said “One tribunal is trying to do something which is good for people. Let us assist them and not discourage them”.
This means that with effect from 1st May 2015, no diesel vehicles older than 10 years and petrol ones more than 15 years old will be allowed to run in the NCR region. An estimated 2.5 lakh vehicles would be affected with this petition being ruled out.
For now it is just NCR but sooner or later this will be applicable to the whole country. Last week NGT has ordered the Secretaries of all the states and Union Territories to come up with solutions and road maps to curb vehicular pollution in their respective regions. The signs clearly indicate that NGT doesn’t want NCR region to be another Paris and India to become another China.
