Paving the way for the implementation of the Centre’s ambitious voluntary vehicle scrappage policy, the Union road transport and highways ministry Friday night issued a draft notification, which states that the registration won’t be renewed for government vehicles that are 15 years old by 1 April 2022.

This will apply to all vehicles owned by the Centre, the states, union territories, public sector undertakings, municipal bodies and autonomous bodies.

The draft notification has been put in public domain for 30 days for inviting comments and suggestions from the public. The final notification will be issued after 30 days.

With this, government vehicles would become the first category of vehicles that will go off the road after they attain 15 years.

The Union road transport and highways ministry is in the process of firming up the contours of the voluntary policy, under which the life of government and commercial vehicles will be capped at 15 years and private vehicles at 20 years. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the policy in her budget speech on 1 February.

The ministry was earlier considering rolling it out to cover commercial vehicles first, followed by private vehicles, senior ministry officials told ThePrint.

The ministry is also planning to provide financial incentives to owners, in the form of waiver of registration fee, once they go to buy new vehicles after getting their old ones scrapped. Automobile manufacturers have been pushing for more financial incentives to the consumers to promote scrapping of old vehicles through formal scrappage centres.

A clutch of measures for scrapping of old vehicles

In January, the road transport and highways ministry had proposed a clutch of measures to ensure that vehicles, which are over 15 years old, stay off the road.

This included a steep increase in fee for renewal of fitness certificate for old commercial vehicles, increasing the fee for renewal of registration of private vehicles that are over 20 years old and imposing a hefty green tax on old polluting vehicles.

The ministry has proposed to increase the renewal fee for fitness certificate for commercial vehicles from the current Rs 200 to Rs 7,500. Presently, it is mandatory for commercial vehicles, which are over eight years old, to renew their fitness certificate annually.

An analysis done by AT Kearney for the road ministry in 2017 had pegged the net economic benefit for the country to the tune of Rs 3,900 crore owing to savings from crude oil import and domestic steel scrap generation replacing imported scrap.

But implementing the scrappage policy will be challenging, primarily because of lack of supporting infrastructure. Presently India has just seven automated fitness test centres, which is inadequate to cater to the market.

Also, currently India has just two authorised scrappage centres.

The road ministry had earlier in 2018 proposed to make vehicle scrapping mandatory from 2020 onwards. However, it had to put the proposal on hold after the Prime Minister’s Office did not agree to it and directed the ministry to make the scheme voluntary and consult states.