India needs 1,000 vehicle scrapping, 400 fitness testing centres, Gadkari says 

India needs 1,000 vehicle scrapping units and at least 400 vehicle testing facilities with the kind of number of vehicles on the roads, said Road, Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari. The government is pushing for vehicle scrapping to phase out unfit and polluting vehicles.  

The transport sector is responsible for 40% of the environmental pollution and vehicle scrapping is a win-win for all the stakeholders, the minister said while launching DigiELV, a trading platform for end-of-life vehicle certificate of deposit. “The pollution caused by one old truck is equivalent to pollution caused by 16 new trucks,” he added. 

The government introduced the Voluntary Vehicle-Fleet Modernisation Programme, or Vehicle Scrapping Policy, in April 2022 to support vehicle scrapping through incentives and infrastructure in the form of Automated Testing Stations and Registered Vehicle Scrapping Facilities.  

On depositing the vehicle for scrapping at registered scrapping facilities, the vehicle owner gets a Certificate of Deposit, which is tradable. It can be used for multiple benefits, such as registration fee waivers, road tax concessions, and discounts from automakers on the purchase of new vehicles. The policy has notified state governments to offer a concession on motor vehicle tax of up to 25% for non-transport vehicles, and up to 15% on transport vehicles.  

The policy was launched with a scrapping target of over 1 crore vehicles, which are unfit or have not applied for reregistration. A vehicle is declared end-of-life or unfit if it fails in the automated fitness test. A valid fitness certificate is necessary for the renewal of vehicle registration. 

Currently, there are 84 registered scrapping facilities across the country, and they have received 19,827 scrapping applications, as per the data on the website of the road ministry. Automakers, including Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, and Mahindra & Mahindra have set up scrapping facilities in multiple locations. 

Meanwhile, DigiELV, the trading platform created by Meta Materials Circular Markets, allows owners a Certificate of Deposit to sell their certificates through the online platform. The company claims that over 800 certificates have been traded on DigiELV in its beta phase over the last three months.