Delhi Bans Fuel for Older Vehicles in New Anti-Pollution Move

The capital of the world's dirtiest city, New Delhi, has devised a fresh plan to reduce the extent of poisonous air pollution by banning fuel supplies to old vehicles. Petrol vehicles over 15 years and diesel ones over 10 years of age will be debarred from refueling at petrol pumps in the city from 1 July 2025. This is the new offer by the authorities to try and stem emissions from old vehicles that still form part of the city's bad air quality issue.

Despite the fact that the Supreme Court of India itself had already prohibited plying of such aged vehicles in Delhi through a 2018 ruling, its enforcement has been meager. Over six million of such non-compliant vehicles have been discovered to continue operating in the capital. The policy aims at tightening enforcement by exploring fuel availability, essentially grounding the vehicle by denying it supply chain.

Public address systems and number plate readers have been equipped at Delhi petrol pumps to facilitate easy enforcement. Police and civic body personnel have also been positioned at refueling sites. Officials have been instructed to warn legitimate scrapping dealers if the prohibited vehicles attempt to purchase fuel. The regulation applies to private and commercial vehicles and is being enforced based on the age registered by the vehicle.

The ban is part of a widened ban system to be implemented in November for border satellite cities such as Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurugram, and Faridabad. Together with Delhi, these areas form the National Capital Region (NCR) with a population of over 32 million. The government feels that the measure will significantly lower the emissions from non-advanced vehicles.

Delhi air falls to dangerous levels every day, especially in winter. The capital is shrouded in a veil of smog during the season because of a mixture of exhausts from motor vehicles, industrial wastes, and farm waste smoke due to burning by neighboring states. Weak winds and low temperatures in winter do not leave space for the evaporation of polluters, thus further degrading the air.

The poisonous concentrations of PM2.5—fine particles with diameters smaller than 2.5 micrometres—are a poisonous health threat. They are tiny enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and even into the blood, causing respiratory illness, cardiovascular illness, and more. In a 2019 article in the medical journal The Lancet, air pollution had already resulted in 1.67 million premature deaths in India alone in 2019.

Despite the demonstrated health dangers, past government interventions have had limited success. Experimental limitation of some vehicles has been attempted, odd-even number plate schemes, water-spraying lorries to curtail dust. They have tended to be short-lived, poorly enforced or loosely applied and short-lived in their effects.

The greatest challenge is enforcement. Though the suggested ban on fuel for non-compliant vehicles will starve them of fuel, tough and consistent enforcement will be paramount. Loopholes, corruption, and lack of monitoring have repealed similar measures in the past. The new policy can have the same fate unless robust monitoring and sanctions go with it.

The Delhi pollution crisis is not limited to emissions from vehicles alone. Factory emissions, construction dust, refuse burning, and seasonal farm fires all add up to the air quality crisis. But the vehicular pollution component is predominant because of the high density of vehicles in the city and the large number of private vehicles and delivery vans.
The government has also established more general goals of transitioning toward cleaner energy and making the nation reliant on fossil fuels less. These longer-term shifts, however, necessitate enormous investment in infrastructure at gigantic scales, widespread adoption of electric cars, and healthy urban planning measures. The present ban is a stopgap measure in a wider and more intricate environmental issue.

Public health experts have consistently called for stronger and more systemic reforms, including modernising public transport, investing in electric mobility, enforcing emissions standards, and improving regional coordination among Indian states. Without comprehensive policy shifts and regional cooperation, piecemeal actions are unlikely to significantly alter Delhi’s pollution trajectory.

The capital's residents have normalized the seasonal air pollution issue as part of their lifestyle, and some buy air purifiers and use masks seasonally long before COVID-19 made the latter the new norm. These are short-term solutions that serve only a section of society, and millions of people get to inhale dirty air daily.

As Delhi continues along with the policy of banning fuel, its success will be contingent upon enforcement first, civil obedience, and coordination between other regional governments. The extension of the ban to other surrounding cities shortly afterward will be the real measure of the government's capability for region-wide environmental policy implementation.

With the extent of the problem of pollution reaching to quality of life, climate effect, and health of the population, such measures are justified. They must form part of an all-encompassing policy that tackles the underlying causes of pollution and replaces with appropriate, affordable alternatives to the people.

Delhi government's move to curb fuel sales to old vehicles is a welcome step, but the way to clean air will be longer and tougher. With winter already on the city's horizon, it will once again encounter its worst air pollution season, so it is essential that the authorities stick to this policy and bring in more structural reforms in the long run.

Source: AFP, Edited by Andrew Zinin | Journal Reference: The Lancet