BENGALURU: As of March this year, there were 3,67,663 vehicles plying in the city which are more than 15 years old, according to the Transport Department.
In the light of a recent ruling by the National Green Tribunal directing authorities to ban all vehicles which are 15 years old from plying on Delhi roads, around 29 lakh vehicles are set to leave the capital’s limits.
An ongoing case in the Karnataka High Court could lead to the state’s transport department enforcing similar measures, officials said.
Of the 3,67,663 vehicles in Bengaluru city, there are 2,02,413 two-wheelers and 73,480 are cars as part of a total of 2,94,027 non-transport vehicles registered in or before 1999. The total number of transport vehicles, including multi-axle vehicles and trucks is 10,564. Around 8,942 light goods vehicles as well as 1,665 buses are still registered in RTOs.
These are vehicles which were registered before the Bharat Stage Emission Standards were enforced in 2000. Over the years, the country has moved from BS-1 to BS-IV. These standards are meant to regulate the output of air pollutants from motor vehicle engines. While the current BS-IV mandates a maximum of 50 parts per million (ppm) of sulphur in fuel, earlier BS-III standards allowed 150 ppm all the way to 300 ppm in the previous editions of the norms. The country is planning to shift to more stringent BS-V norms by 2017 with a cap of 10 ppm.
“There is no doubt that older vehicles pollute more. They were made at a time when the norms were not stringent. This is why we have been trying to promote the shift from older vehicles to newer ones. The Transport Department this year has earmarked around `22 lakh for subsidies of `30,000 each for users who want to shift from two-stroke vehicles to four-stroke,” said Maruti Sambrani, joint commissioner of Transport (Environment and E-Governance).
The department is also cracking down on old two-stroke vehicles which cause noise and air pollution. According to statistics, there are 1,93,990 motorcycles in the city which are 15 years old. The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, after being pulled up by the High Court this year, had asked officials to ensure that no vehicles which exceeded noise limits specified in the Environment Protection Rules be allowed to ply.
Transport Commissioner Ramegowda said the department had stopped giving fitness certificates to certain categories of vehicles which were 15 years old. “In my opinion, enforcing the directives of the court, if they are issued asking us to cancel registrations of 15-year-old vehicles, will not be a problem. For individual users, having a 15-year-old vehicle when every year there are advances in technology makes no sense,” he said.
According to a report by the World Health Organisation based on data gathered in 2010, the city’s annual mean of fine particulate matter of 10 microns or less was 103, while Delhi was at 286 for the same year.
