Car Scrapping Laws To Change: No Need To Scrap If Car Meets Emission Norms

Finally, someone at the Indian government is seeing sense. The Indian government is working on a new scrapping policy framework that will scrap old vehicles only if they don’t meet emission norms, not just because they’re old. In other words, vehicles that meet emission norms will not longer have to be scrapped, even if they’re 15 or 20 years old.

Original image courtesy Jan J George

This means that if your old car or motorcycle meets emission norms that it was originally designed for, it can continue to stay on the road. Great move, in our opinion, for there are lakhs of well maintained old cars and two wheelers in India that meet emission norms, and do not need to be scrapped.

Meanwhile, here’s what Anurag Jain, Secretary, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH), had to say about the government’s new policy framework that’s currently being given the final contours,

The government is working on a policy to link the vehicle scrapping mandate with their emission levels instead of their age. When you come out with a policy that scrapping is mandatory after 15 years, people come back to us with a question: If I have maintained my vehicle well, why do you want to scrap my vehicle? We are working on a policy…we are studying it from the pollution view.

Notably, this is the first time that a high ranking Indian government official has talked about keeping well maintained old vehicles on the road. So far, all talk had been confined to scrapping old vehicles once they reach a certain age, irrespective of how they’re maintained.

When will the new scrapping policy be launched?

Unclear, as of now. The Transport Secretary has not revealed a timeline for the new scrapping policy. Since the government has already begun work on the new policy, it should be notified within the next couple of years.

The current scrapping policy is quite unfair to owners of well maintained vehicles because of the following reasons:

1. Scrapping a well maintained car/two wheeler just because it’s old puts tremendous financial burden on owners as prices of both cars and two wheelers have gone up drastically. For instance, a 15 year-old Honda City bought in 2009 would have cost about Rs. 10 lakh on road. A Honda City bought in 2024 costs Rs. 20 lakh. The same story plays out in the two wheeler space as well.
2. The ecological impact of buying a new car is quite high as cars use a lot of non-renewable materials sourced from the earth. In terms of sustainability, using a well maintained car has a much lower impact than buying a brand new one.
3. For many in India, a vehicle is an emotional purchase. Such owners take very good care of their vehicles, almost treating them like extended members of the family. Scrapping a well kept vehicle is a painful decision for these owners.
4. Finally, the current policy disincentivizes those maintaining their vehicles well. It encourages the culture of replace rather than reuse, which is environmentally unsustainable in the long run.

What happens to the Delhi-NCR NGT Ban On 10/15 Year Old Diesel/Petrol Cars?

It’s likely to stay as is. This is at least until the Indian government comes up with a notification that overrules the NGT blanket ban on old diesel and petrol vehicles. If such a notification comes in, there is a possibility for the NGT ban to be lifted. However, as things stand today, the NGT ban on diesel cars older than 10 years and petrol cars older than 15 years remains stays.