Vehicular Pollution

Ministry of Environment and Forests15-March, 2016 17:14 IST

Vehicular Pollution

The complaints mostly relate to phasing out of diesel vehicles direction of NGT in context with phasing out of 10 year old diesel vehicles in Delhi/NCR, price differential between diesel and gasoline fuel, technologies for reducing emissions from diesel vehicles, etc.

The Emission standards are notified by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) under the provisions of Motor Vehicles Act, 1989. There are separate sets of emission norms applicable for diesel and gasoline vehicles. Presently, BS - IV emission norms are applicable for 63 cities. Recently, the Government has finalised leapfrogging to Bharat Stage VI (BS-VI) mass emission norms by 1st April, 2020 and released draft notification on 19th February, 2016 to this effect. It is estimated that investment requirement for gasoline works out to be about 20,000 crore and for diesel, it is estimated to be 60,000 crore as per Auto-Fuel Vision and Policy - 2025.

The compliance of emission norms for new vehicles are ensured through Type Approval testing of the new vehicles at the certified testing centres. Once a Type Approval Certificate is issued, then only a particular model of a vehicle is allowed to ply on the roads. Conformity of Production (CoP) testing is also done on new vehicles to ensure compliance. State/UT Governments are responsible for implementation of notified emission norms. The compliance of emission from in-use vehicles is done through Pollution Under Control Testing (PUC) carried out at the PUC centres authorized by State Transport Departments. Possession of a valid PUC certificate is a requirement for a vehicle to ply on roads.

This information was given by Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Prakash Javadekar, in Lok Sabha today.