A Supreme Court bench comprising of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta has instructed the Indian government to start issuing holograms/stickers to all private and commercial vehicles. These stickers will be of various colours to indicate the fuel type being used by the vehicle.

While most commercial vehicles run on diesel, the changes in colour will mostly be found on cars, SUVs, EVs and hybrid vehicles in our country. A light-blue sticker will be used for petrol and CNG vehicles while an orange one would be placed on diesel vehicles. Commercial vehicles running on CNG will also require the new holograms.

The Supreme Court has asked the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) to issue advertisements to make vehicle owners aware as to how and where to get these holograms. It says that owners should collect their stickers from the district transport office after showing the registration certificate of their vehicle.

This process was to be implemented in Delhi/NCR by October 2 but it is yet to start. During the hearing, advocate Aparajita Singh, assisting the court as an amicus curiae in the air pollution matter, said that the process of having these colour coded stickers has not yet begun and MoRTH must inform the court about it.

Toyota Kirloskar Motor has also approached the Supreme Court saying that it would not be fair to place hybrid vehicles on the same level as traditional petrol and diesel engine vehicles as they cause very negligible pollution and hence should be exempted from the colour-coded system. However, the bench stated that it is for the government to decide on that matter. Reports also suggest that the date of registration of the vehicle will also be printed on these colour coded stickers.