New Delhi
The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) in the National Capital Region (NCR) on Friday said it is working on a plan to study the feasibility of switching a substantial number of government vehicles in the Capital to electric mode and will submit a plan within a month to the Supreme Court.
In a statement to a bench of justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan, the government’s law officer, additional solicitor general (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati said that the commission has started consulting stakeholders following the court’s order on January 27, wherein it sought to know whether a policy decision can be taken to ensure vehicles purchased by governments, municipal bodies and affiliated agencies would be of the electric mode.
The CAQM was granted time till March 17 to respond, and the court will consider them on March 21. “The CAQM has started the exercise of consulting all stakeholders and a plan will be in place within a month,” Bhati said.
The court had mooted the idea while considering the impact of vehicular pollution on the pollution load of the Capital, with a majority of private vehicles being run on petrol and diesel. While cleaner fuels, such as CNG, exist, the bench noted that vehicles owned by the government, constituting a substantial number in the Capital, could consider reducing the emission levels by switching to electric. It was hearing a petition filed by lawyer and activist MC Mehta for curbing Delhi’s pollution from varied sources.
Amicus curiae and senior advocate Aparajita Singh, who is assisting the court in the matter, had in the past said that electric vehicles need to be supported with adequate support infrastructure which involve battery charging points and disposal of large volume of used batteries.
In October last year, the CAQM submitted a report to the court indicating that solution for an effective long-term strategy to control vehicular emissions lies in the transition to e-mobility.
The report said that Delhi has 3,00,810 electric vehicles (EVs) and 4,793 charging points. The government of national capital territory of Delhi (GNCTD) has been given the target of increasing the charging base to 18,000 points by 2025-26, it said.
But going by how the NCR states fare in this regard, Delhi is relatively better. The CAQM said that in Uttar Pradesh, with a registered EV base of 1,06,655, there are only 171 charging points while Haryana has 305 charging points to cater to over 95,000 registered EVs. The commission has set targets of adding additional charging points in UP and Haryana by 252 and 170 respectively by the end of 2026.
Vehicular pollution in Delhi is one of the major contributors to air pollution causing an increase in levels of noxious gases and particulate matter.
The NCR extends to eight districts in Uttar Pradesh including Noida and Ghaziabad, 14 districts in Haryana including Faridabad and Gurugram, and Rajasthan’s Alwar and Bharatpur districts, besides the whole of Delhi.
As part of evolving a better emission policy for NCR, CAQM is monitoring with NCR states to ensure phase-wise transition of the bus fleet to CNG or electric latest by December 31, 2026 while new registration for autos is strictly for electric version since January 2023. As of July 2024, there are only 7,683 buses in Delhi, including 1970 electric buses.
As per the Economic Survey of 2023-24, Delhi has a total stock of 79 lakh vehicles and during 2023-24, another 6.5 lakh vehicles were added as per the VAHAN database. Of these, 90 per cent are two-wheelers and cars.
According to amicus curiae, the growing vehicular population not only contributes to the particulate pollution but leads to spike in nitrogen oxide levels as well. Vehicles caught in congestion and idling can spew emissions several times higher than their normal nitrogen oxide emissions on roads, Singh said.
The court is pursuing a multi-pronged approach to curb pollution in Delhi and the action on vehicular pollution is just one of the aspects being considered. Besides, the court is examining steps to curb pollution from other sources as well, including industrial, stubble burning, firecrackers, open waste burning, solid waste management, among a host of other factors.
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