The Supreme Court on Friday opted not to entertain a plea challenging the Delhi government’s 2024 vehicle scrappage policy, which mandates the scrapping of diesel vehicles older than 10 years and petrol vehicles older than 15 years. The bench, comprised of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih, directed petitioner Nagalakshmi Laxmi Narayanan to seek redress through appropriate authorities instead.
During the proceedings, the justices emphasized the procedural inadequacies in challenging such guidelines through an intervention application (IA), stating, “You can challenge the guidelines substantively by a separate petition. This issue was dismissed by this court and the order was upheld by us regarding these vehicles. We cannot disturb the direction of the NGT (National Green Tribunal) in an IA. As long as the NGT order is not modified, we cannot do anything or clarify the order.”
The Supreme Court’s decision effectively allows the plea to be withdrawn in the longstanding M C Mehta case focused on pollution control in Delhi and its adjoining areas, granting the petitioner the liberty to approach the court again should an adverse order be issued.
The challenge arose from the Delhi government’s guidelines issued on February 20, 2024, which were in compliance with the NGT’s 2015 order. The petitioner contended that applying these guidelines retroactively to vehicles purchased before the NGT’s order is arbitrary and infringes on the vehicle owners’ rights, including their right to property under Article 300A of the Constitution. The petitioner argued that this retrospective application violated the buyers’ legitimate expectations who had paid for a full 15 years of registration, assuming they could use their vehicles for that duration.
Further, the plea highlighted concerns over the scrappage policy’s broad application, pointing out that it treated all “overaged” vehicles as uniformly polluting without considering individual emission levels or maintenance quality. This lack of differentiation, despite the availability of modern emission testing technologies, was deemed arbitrary by the petitioner.
Moreover, the petitioner criticized the policy for not considering specific emission standards or the Bharat Stage (BS) emission norms under which various vehicles were categorized, arguing that the blanket imposition of a 10-year limit for diesel and a 15-year limit for petrol vehicles was unjustified.
