Delhi Government Blinks After Protests Against Crackdown on Polluting Vehicles 
Air Pollution 07/07/2025 •
Delhi traffic officer Ashok Kumar explains the new rules on 1 July.

NEW DELHI – When drivers entered fuel stations on 1 July, they found bright new warning signs and traffic police positioned at the fuel pumps. Old vehicles would be identified by special, new cameras and denied fuel. Drivers  also risked having their vehicles seized for “liquidation.” 

The day marked the beginning of a widespread campaign by central government’s Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) in the Delhi region to reduce air pollution.  

Any gasoline-powered vehicle older than 10 years, or a diesel vehicle older than 15 years, was supposed to face action – and at least 80 such vehicles were seized initially.

Although some  6.1 million over-age vehicles are registered, the actual number on the roads is far lower, and some estimate it to be around 400,000. 

However, enforcement quickly fizzled out after the Delhi state government sought a pause following protests on social media. Many of these went viral and were also reported widely in the media. 

Enforcement aided by advanced new cameras

To identify these vehicles at the pumps and on the road, CAQM installed hundreds of advanced cameras with automated number plate recognition (ANPR) linked to a database. 

The ban on such older vehicles circulating in Delhi was first introduced in 2015, but after two days of protests over the enforcement, the Delhi government pressured CAQM to put the operation on hold. 

Chief Minister of Delhi Rekha Gupta tweeted that the decision should be suspended as it was adversely affecting the daily lives and livelihoods of millions of families. She called for a practical, equitable, and phased solution.

Delhi’s environment minister, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, cited several “technological gaps” in the ANPR system in a letter to CAQM posted on X on Thursday. These include that it lacks robustness, there are crucial glitches in the camera placement, sensors aren’t working, and the system is not fully integrated with databases of states neighbouring Delhi. He called for a “holistic approach and implementation” in Delhi and its neighbouring regions. 

However, a source told Health Policy Watch that ANPR was able to identify up to 6,000 overage vehicles per day during tests, and described it as a “foolproof” method. Tests conducted since last December showed that the system has worked well. 

Ironically, a day before the enforcement drive began, Gupta of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP Party said that the Delhi state government would follow orders of the courts and the CAQM.

Despite repeated inquiries from Health Policy Watch, CAQM did not provide any details on the future of the campaign in Delhi. However, it made it clear in a press release related to curbing pollution in neighbouring Haryana state, that it intends to continue to advocate for the liquidation of the ‘end-of-life’ (EoL) vehicles plan and ANPR cameras. 

The initial campaign in Delhi was supposed to be part of a regional initiative by Indian authorities that aimed to get an additional 4.5 million EoL vehicles off the road starting in two phases in November,  then April 2026. The rollout of ANPR cameras in other states and cities had also begun. 

However, as long as the Delhi State Government opposes enforcement, the agency will find it difficult to continue to clean up Delhi.  

Weak political appetite to tackle air pollution

The call for a pause signals the weak political appetite of the five-month-old Delhi government to take hard decisions to improve air quality in what has frequently been ranked as the world’s most polluted capital over the past decade. 

Even before Sirsa’s letter to CAQM last week, there was a perceptible shift in the party’s tone. In March, Sirsa promised an early crackdown on polluting vehicles that are a major contributor to Delhi’s annual air pollution, particularly in winter:

Older vehicles emit high levels of polluting nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and contribute to the microscopic pollutant, PM2.5. In 2024, PM2.5 levels reached peaks of 732 micrograms per m3 – about 73 times higher than the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 24-hour guideline level. 

But on 2 July after the protests, Sirsa blamed the previous Aam Admi Party (AAP) government for not enforcing the ban earlier:

The protests included many influential voices across the political spectrum. But most ignore health impacts and the fact that the older cars have outdated fuel standards, which means that they are inevitably more polluting, regardless of how well they may have been maintained. 

Health impact of vehicular pollution 

Drivers and passengers in heavy traffic with many polluting vehicles are typically exposed to excessively high levels of oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) from gasoline vehicles, as well as fine particulates, PM2.5 from diesel. 

Even short-term exposure to high levels of those pollutants prompts immediate, physiological responses, including headaches, irritation in the eyes, nose and throat, and difficulties in breathing. 

Chronic, long-term exposure to traffic pollution can have far more severe health effects, worsening asthma and other lung disorders, cardiovascular problems and high blood pressure, leading to premature death. 

Air pollution has also been identified in a new report as being a more significant cause of lung cancer in ‘never smokers’ than previously believed, according to a new study published in Nature. Patients from regions of the world with high levels of air pollution were more likely to have genomic mutations linked to cancer.

In Delhi alone, 7.8 years life years are estimated to be lost from air pollution while the average for India is 3.6 years. 

WHO’s South East Asia region, which extends east from Pakistan to Bangladesh, continues to have the highest overall burden of disease from air pollution, and India is one of the worst-affected countries. A little over two million Indians a year die from air pollution, with the worst effects concentrated in Delhi and other major cities. 

Air pollution is also linked to obesity, diabetes, metabolic dysfunction and genomic damage, points out Dr Sanjeev Bagai, a prominent paediatrician in Delhi. 

“Vehicular pollution is the lesser-mentioned culprit causing serious human harm,” he said in an interview with Health Policy Watch.

Vehicles are a big chunk of Delhi’s air pollution

In the Delhi region, vehicles contribute significantly to the air pollution crisis. According to officials, vehicles emit 78% of the nitrogen oxide (NOx), 41% of sulphur dioxide (SO2), and at least 28% of PM 2.5 particulate matter pollution –  although some estimates put it at 40% and as much as 50% in winter. Much of the NOx also converts to PM 2.5, which is so fine that it can settle deep into the lungs and other organs, causing damage. 

Neither the science nor the policy to get older vehicles off the road are new.  A ban on EoL vehicles has been in force since 2015, when it was first ordered by the nation’s top environmental court, the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The ban was upheld in 2018 by the Supreme Court and in 2024, a powerful panel headed by the country’s top bureaucrat, then Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, called out the “very slow progress” on implementing the ban. 

Science vs #DelhiFuelBan protests

Many of those criticising the crackdown claim that 10 or 15-year-old vehicles can remain in good condition. For instance, one social media user praised his father’s 16-year-old Mercedes as a so-called “zero pollution” vehicle.

The facts, however, don’t bear that out. Vehicles with the latest fuel standard –  Bharat Stage 6 (BS 6), equivalent to Euro 6 – emit far less pollution than earlier standards, according to a study by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT). 

In its 2024 report, the ICCT said that so far, India’s “leap” from BS 4 to BS  was contributing to “significant reductions in tailpipe emissions.” Even 5- to 10-year-old vehicles with a BS 4 standard are approximately five or six times more polluting, while those that are 10 years or older, with BS 3 and BS 2 standards, can be 10 and 11 times more polluting, ICCT said.

But the claim that well maintained older vehicles are “clean” are being widely promoted, including by this influencer with over 15 million YouTube followers:

Protests across political spectrum

Criticism of the ban has come across most of the political spectrum. An opposition Member of Parliament, Saket Gokhale of the Trinamool Congress, called the ban “ridiculous” and a “major financial hit to the middle class”, affecting six million owners. He has written to the federal transport minister asking for the policy to be withdrawn:

A columnist appealed to Prime Minister Modi, who follows her on X, to allow old vehicles that comply with emission norms. She cites an automobile manufacturers group, which claims that a large number of these vehicles can meet stringent standards. 

Most air quality advocates are silent

On the other hand, the usually vocal air quality advocates were largely silent. The authorities also did not defend the ban once the protests began increasing. 

Approaches by Health Policy Watch to several organisations yielded no response. Amongst the few exceptions were Karthik Ganesan and Arpan Patra of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). 

In an article on Thursday in the Indian Express, they welcomed the measures as being a good, first step shortly before the campaign was suspended. 

“The restriction on the fuelling of end-of-life vehicles in Delhi firmly communicates the government’s intent to curtail pollution… This ban must cascade into the following logical next steps to truly clean up transportation emissions,” wrote Ganesan and Patra.

Until now, the government had largely relied on frequent, mandatory pollution checks on vehicles that pulled into service stations, but these use old technologies that only check for very high levels of smoke particles and carbon monoxide. They don’t capture data on fine particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and sulphates, which are the pollutants most harmful to human health. 

As for more sophisticated testing, there are only two vehicle fitness centres in the entire city of more than 22 million people capable of this.

Meanwhile, studies by the ICCT and others have demonstrated that filtering vehicles by their age rather than rudimentary and outdated emissions tests, is a more reliable means of getting polluting vehicles off the road. 

Cameras installed at Delhi service stations can identify older vehicles by their registration plates. But their use now hangs in the balance after the government suspended implementation of the ban on older vehicles.

Will the new Delhi government ever step up? 

Experts say that enforcing the ban is just one step in reducing Delhi’s air pollution at its source. Public transport is patchy and buses don’t reach many neighbourhoods. 

About 31% of urban neighbourhoods in Delhi fall outside a 500-meter radius of a public bus stop, a threshold recognised as the standard for walkable access under India’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) policy, according to a recent study.

If the government does eventually enforce the ban on old vehicles using its updated technology, it will also be expected to enforce other court orders and pollution curbs  like the ban on fire crackers and steps against waste burning. 

If it doesn’t, it will need to contend with the optics. As Ashwini Tewari, the chief of India’s largest bank, State Bank of India, pointed out recently, foreigners want to avoid the Delhi region, including the booming city of Gurgaon on its southern border, where major multinationals like Google, Microsoft, IBM and Deloitte have large offices. 

The quality of the Delhi government’s air pollution mitigation strategies thus has major economic implications at the national as well as local level. 

The record for this new BJP government, which came into power in February, remains very mixed. While it is continuing and extending policies such as more EV buses, it is also is facing criticism for a plan to install so-called ‘modern air purifiers’ in the park of an elite neighbourhood despite a failed earlier experiment with outdoor smog towers. 

The new plan is to install 150 such ‘air purifiers’ over 85 acres. But with Delhi is spread over 366,000 acres, any such initiative will be ineffective, as experience and studies have shown. 

Cutting pollution at source is always a better option, as air quality researchers point out. For now, a series of pollution maps of Paris, showing how a curb on vehicles improved air quality, has gone viral in India. 

Data maps show the effect of vehicle curbs on lower air pollution in Paris

 

Image Credits: Asian News International, Chetan Bhattacharji, University of Chicago, Airparif.

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