Over 1.25 lakh old vehicles registered in Gautam Buddh Nagar will be taken off the roads in compliance with a National Green Tribunal order on phasing out diesel and petrol vehicles older than 10 and 15 years, respectively, from the national capital region. The district transport department has started a campaign to phase out such vehicles and begun contacting their owners from October 1 following an Uttar Pradesh government order, officials said.

Assistant Regional Transport Officer (ARTO) Siyaram Verma said, "These vehicles will either be scrapped or a no-objection certificate (NOC) issued for their usage so that they could be used in some select districts that do not fall under NCR." Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Ganesh Saha told PTI that the police department, on its part, was also carrying out stricter checks and penalising old vehicles found plying on the roads.

The Uttar Pradesh government order said there were 34 districts with better air quality where such vehicles could be transferred after the issuance of an NOC from their respective regional transport offices. Gautam Buddh Nagar had 8,26,110 registered vehicles, including 94,299 diesel and 7,31,811 petrol, as on October 1, according to transport department data.

Of the total, 1,34,073 vehicles -- or nearly 15 per cent -- will have to be deregistered in compliance with the green tribunal rules and the state government order, the data showed. These include 25,238 diesel and 1,08,835 petrol-run vehicles. Reiterating the green tribunal's 2016 guideline on removing old vehicles from NCR, the Uttar Pradesh government said the order to deregister old vehicles shall be complied with effectively and without default.?

"All the vehicles which are deregistered in Delhi/NCR would not be permitted to ply in Delhi/NCR. However, the authorities will issue NOC for such vehicles to be registered outside Delhi/NCR. We further clarify that in terms of the orders of the tribunal, every state has to identify areas where the dispersion of the air is higher and vehicular density is least," it stated.

"The diesel vehicles which are more than 15 years old and are BS-I (Bharat Stage) or BS-II compliant shall be scrapped and no NOC will be issued for transfer of the vehicles," it added.

Among the 34 districts where old vehicles from NCR can be transferred are Etawah, Sant Kabir Nagar, Ambedkar Nagar, Kushinagar, Farrukhabad, Jaunpur, Kannauj, Ballia, Sultanpur, Ghazipur, Mainpuri, Pratapgarh, Siddharthnagar, Maharajganj, Shravasti, Auraiyya, Sonbhadra, Fatehpur, Pilibhit, Shahjahanpur, Lakhimpur, Badaun, Balrampur, Hardoi, Bahraich, Orai, Etah, Kasganj, Mahoba, Lalitpur, Chitrakoot, Hamirpur, Amethi and Bijnor, the order stated.

(WIth PTI inputs)