if Delhi wanted clean air, it had to strike at its biggest culprit – vehicular emissions.
Since then, study after study – from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the Centre for Science and Environment, and TERI – has confirmed that vehicles are the single largest source of Delhi’s PM2.5, contributing between 41% and 51% of the city’s pollution.
Instead of tightening the rules on vehicular emissions, the new Delhi government is systematically dismantling them. It has quietly diluted the Supreme Court’s 2018 order to phase out Delhi’s dirtiest vehicles – diesels over 10 years and petrol cars over 15. This July, government suspended the ban on refuelling these polluting vehicles, citing citizens’ “emotional attachment” to their vehicles.
more recently the government has permitted the deregistered vehicles to get re-registered outside Delhi-NCR. The argument is that this will move the polluting vehicles to other states. It is an insult to reason.
The populist gimmicks – designed to please the electorate – have not stopped with rehabilitating old polluting vehicles. This year, both the Delhi government and the Union government pleaded before the Supreme Court not to protect citizens from poison in the air, but to secure the “right” to burst firecrackers. The ban was lifted.
Delhi’s crisis endures not for lack of solutions, but because of political deceit – leaders who pretend to act while letting the city choke.
by Ashish Khetan
12/11/2025