The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on Tuesday notified End-of-Life vehicles. The concerned gazette notification said vehicles makers have to take necessary measures to encourage scrappage of vehicles at registered vehicle scrapping facility or designated collection centres, effective April this year.

The rules say that every producer (vehicle manufacturer) must make necessary arrangements to receive the end-of-life vehicle from the registered owner at any designated collection centre, including its sales outlet, and should upload such list of designated collection centres, sales outlets on its website at a conspicuous place of its sales outlets and service centres.

Vehicle manufacturers have to declare scrappage or recycle steel equivalent to 8 per cent of the number of vehicles sold in India 20 years ago. For instance, a company that has sold vehicles in 2005-06, has to now declare minimum 8 per cent of the steel used in vehicles that were sold that year in India, and in return get the certification under the Extended Producer Responsibility, which means the vehicle companies can declare to government that they are recycling the vehicles in an environmentally sound manner.

Waste batteries

However, the rules will not apply to waste batteries covered under the Battery Waste Management Rules, 2022; plastic packaging as covered under the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016; waste tyres and used oil as covered under Hazardous and Other Wastes Rules, 2016; and E-waste as covered under E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022, it said.

The notification further says that the rules apply to all types of vehicles defined in the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 (59 of 1988) that include electric vehicle, battery operated vehicle and e-rikshaw or e-cart.

However, it will not apply to agricultural tractor, agricultural trailer, combine harvester and power tiller, the notification said. According to experts, this is a significant oversight as most of these agricultural equipment are run on diesel.

“It is surprising why tractors and agricultural trailer are not part of this rules,” said a senior official of one of the leading automobile manufacturers.