Delhi govt lifts one-year cap on re-registration of old vehicles

The Delhi government on Thursday relaxed the norms for issuing the No Objection Certificates (NOCs) for deregistered vehicles in the capital.

According to this decision, the owners of end-of-life vehicles — diesel vehicles aged over 10 years and petrol vehicles over 15 years old — can now apply for an NOC to re-register their vehicles in other states outside the Delhi-NCR region, regardless of the expiry date of the vehicle’s registration.

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Noting the inconvenience caused to the public due to a one-year cap on obtaining NOC registration for deregistration, the Delhi Transport Minister, Pankaj Kumar Singh, said, “We found that the one-year deadline for NOC was creating an unintended logjam, leaving lakhs of vehicles stranded in Delhi. These vehicles were neither being scrapped nor could they be moved out, leading to potential pollution and congestion.”

With this decision, he further added, “We are empowering our citizens to make a responsible choice.”

Calling it a proactive step, the department pointed out that this decision ensures that vehicles deregistered due to age can be legally transferred to regions where they are permitted to ply, effectively removing them from the National Capital’s ecosystem. “This decision will systematically phase out a significant number of older vehicles from Delhi’s roads, giving a direct boost to our efforts in improving air quality and decongesting our city,” the department noted.

Earlier, in August this year, the Supreme Court granted an interim relief to owners of older vehicles in the Delhi-NCR region, issuing a directive that no coercive action should be taken against owners of diesel vehicles over 10 years old and petrol vehicles over 15 years old.

The order was in response to a petition by Delhi Government challenging the existing age-based ban and effectively suspended the enforcement of the previous rules, which stemmed from a 2018 Supreme Court order based on earlier National Green Tribunal (NGT) directives to combat air pollution.