To encourage people for the voluntary vehicle-scrapping policy announced in the Union Budget on February 1, the Centre has issued a draft notification to increase the cost of renewal, registration, and fitness certificate of vehicles older than 15 years.
The Union Road and Transport Ministry has issued the Central Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Rules, 2021, under which it has proposed a hike in charges for renewal and grant of fitness certificate of vehicles older than 15 years. The proposed legislation will come into effect from October 1, 2021.
According to the draft notification, an individual will have to shell out up to Rs 5,000 for renewing the registration of his more than a 15-year-old car -- eight times higher than the current price. For two-wheelers, the charges of renewal and registration would be Rs 1,000 compared to the current fee of Rs 300. For more than 15-year-old imported vehicles, the proposed renewal fee is Rs 40,000.
Total Rs 10,000 will be charged for renewal and grant of fitness certificate for medium goods or passenger motor vehicles. And, for 15-year-old heavy goods or large passenger motor vehicles, like trucks and buses, the renewal certificate charges are likely to increase to Rs 12,500. For a taxi or cab, the charges would be Rs 7,000 and for a three-wheeler or quadricycle, it would go up to Rs 3,500.
Further, the transport ministry has increased the amount of penalty for the delay in renewing the registration of vehicles older than 15 years. According to the proposal, a private vehicle would attract Rs 300 to Rs 500 per month for delay in renewing registration. The penalty would be Rs 50 for the delay in the renewal of the fitness certificate for commercial vehicles.
With the changes in the proposal, the Centre believes the initiative will discourage people from keeping their old vehicle and by default they would opt for the voluntary vehicle scrappage policy. The policy provides for fitness tests after 20 years for personal vehicles while commercial vehicles would require it after the completion of 15 years.
The road transport ministry has also come out with draft norms for setting up registered vehicle scrapping centres. According to the proposal, a vehicle owner will be allowed to take his/her old vehicle to any scrapping centre in the country. And he or she can transfer the scrapping certificate to anyone to get any incentive for buying a new vehicle. The scrapping centre will have to verify the actual ownership of the vehicle before accepting them for scrappage.
Recently, the Union Road and Transport Ministry also announced that "From April 1, 2022, government departments will not be able to renew the certificate of registration of their vehicles, after 15 years. This will apply to all government - central, state, UT, PSUs, municipal bodies & autonomous bodies".
Old vehicles are estimated to cause 10-12 times more pollution than the latest vehicles. The government had earlier said it plans to impose a green tax on old, polluting vehicles while exempting vehicles like strong hybrids, electric vehicles and those running on alternate fuels like CNG, ethanol and LPG from such taxation. The revenue collected through the green tax would be utilised for tackling pollution.
Under the scheme, transport vehicles older than eight years could be charged green tax at the time of renewal of fitness certificate at a rate of 10 to 25 per cent of road tax.
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