Diesel vehicles more than 10-year old banned in Delhi

In another setback to diesel vehicles, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday asked the Delhi government to deregister all vehicles older than 10 year operating in the city.

The order issued by the NGT is effective immediately. The tribunal also ordered the regional transport officers to provide a list of all the deregistered vehicles to the Delhi Traffic Police.

The order has come on the lackadaisical implementation of the ban on 10-year old diesel cars that had remained largely on paper. Now the new order will also impact taxi and cabs that are largely run on diesel.

There is already a ban on registration of diesel engine cars above 2000cc in Delhi-NCR comprising of adjoining Gurugram, Faridabad and Noida satellite towns.

The new order will take away a few lakh passenger vehicles from roads with major models like Toyota Innova and Tata Indica being largely affected. The enforcement is also likely to curtail the demand for diesel cars that has come down drastically to its decade's lowest in the first quarter of the current fiscal.

In recent times, a spare of court orders have come to control the harmful emission of cars, especially diesel that are perceived to be more harmful for the environment with vehicular exhaust being one of the largest emitters of nitrox and particulate matter into the air.