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The government may come up with a policy to offer financial incentives for discarding old cars, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said today. The minister asked people to refrain from using multiple cars and adopt ‘vehicle planning’ on the lines of ‘family planning’.
We are formulating a policy whoever will surrender the old car we will give some incentive to them. We will process the old cars in any industrial area and recycle their parts. We will give some money to them. On one new vehicle purchase government is benefited by Rs 95,000. We will encourage people to sell off their old cars," he said at an industry event here. The minister said that rising vehicle population is a concern on the limited road infrastructure.
Such a policy can promote replacement of old vehicles with modern ones with better emission standards. Large-scale scrap programmes have been introduced across the world. The policy would stimulate growth of the automobile industry and take inefficient, polluting vehicles off the road. The European Union adopted it as a strategy to also beat the economic downturn in 2008.
An earlier study sponsored by the ministry of heavy industries had recommended monetary incentives - Rs 25,000 for a car and Rs 10,000 for a two-wheeler - to encourage people to offer their vehicles as scrap. The committee felt commercial vehicles above 15 years should be phased out, but left the age of vehicles to the final discretion of the ministry of road transport and highways.
