Ship-breakers to be roped in for car-scrapping

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 5

Giridhar Armane, Secretary in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, on Friday said the government was contemplating roping in companies having expertise in the field of scrapping of ships for scrapping of cars found unfit for roads.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced in her Budget speech on Monday that personal vehicles would have to undergo a fitness test if it was more than 20 years’ old. Commercial vehicles would require the fitness test after 15 years, she announced.

If the vehicle was found unfit for road, the owner would be expected to send the vehicle for scrapping. Armane said Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari was working on providing some incentives to encourage owners to send their vehicles for scrapping.

The fitness test of the vehicles would be fully automated, Armane said, adding that this would prevent manipulation of findings that could take place if the test was carried out manually.

Fully automated fitness test of vehicles were carried out in country already at six centres. Target has been set to increase the number of automated fitness test centre to 27. Armane said the centres would be under private ownership.

The machines operational in the country at present are all imported but it was expected that the machines would be soon built indigenously also. If vehicle manufacturers entered into the automated fitness test business, it would be ensured that they were not being partial to vehicles manufactured by their company, Armane said.

Armane said that preliminary research had shown that there were 50-60 lakh vehicles in the country at present, which would be required to undertake the fitness test once the policy was notified. It was possible that many of these old vehicles might have been already abandoned by the owners, the Transport Ministry Secretary said.

Responding to a question, Armane said that following the introduction of the policy, car sales could go up initially and the enhanced sale could last for five to six years.

However, the government announced the policy with a view to help the users who spent hugely more for old vehicles when compared to one that was less old.

In the case of cars the excess expenditure on account of an old one could be over Rs 1 lakh annually compared to a relatively new car. Similarly, the difference between running an old lorry and one that was not so old could be up to Rs 8 lakh, Armane said.

Reduction in air pollution and enhancement of safety of the occupants of the vehicle would be the other benefits of the new policy, Armane said.