MoRTH approves proposal to levy green tax on older vehicles
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is all set to levy a green tax on old vehicles polluting the environment after it has approved a proposal submitted for phasing out polluting and unfit vehicles. The ministry has announced that more than 8 years old transport vehicles could be charged 10-25% as green tax. The personal vehicles shall also be charged this road tax at the time of renewal of their registration certificates after fifteen years.
City buses shall be charged lower green tax while vehicles in highly polluted cities shall be charged higher green tax at up to 50% of road tax. The tax shall be calculated differently on the basis of the fuel used like petrol, diesel and the type of the vehicle shall also be taken under consideration in this process. The ministry has also announced exemption in this tax for strong hybrids vehicles and electric vehicles and for the vehicles running on alternate fuels like ethanol, GNG and LPG, etc.
Farming vehicles such as harvester, tractor, tiller etc shall also be exempted. The green tax shall be beneficial as it will discourage the people from using environment damaging vehicles besides motivating more and more people to switch to cleaner fuels.
Nitin Gadkari, Minister for Road Transport and Highways, has also approved the policy of scraping and deregistration of those vehicles of PSU and government departments which have crossed 15 years of age. The new policy is ready to be notified for its coming into effect from April 1, 2022. As per an estimate, the commercial vehicles constitute over 5% of the total vehicles
It is estimated that commercial vehicles contribute 65-70% of total vehicular pollution. Moreover, the older fleet of vehicles which have been manufactured before 2000 constitute less than 1 per cent of total vehicle fleet even though they contributed almost 15% of total vehicular pollution and these vehicles are polluting the environment about 10-25 times more than the modern vehicles.
