The Road Transport Ministry estimates that voluntary scrapping of vehicles can lead to 15-20% reduction in emissions due to vehicular pollution. But the lack of awareness and adequate scrapping facilities across the country are two roadblocks coming in the way of faster adoption despite the tax advantages for the customers. While data at the end of 2023 indicates that 49,770 Vehicles have been scrapped till date under Vehicle Scrapping Policy and 44 registered vehicle scrapping facilities are operational across 15 States, how easy is it to get my vehicle scrapped if I wanted to? Well, calls to some established dealerships in Western India, especially Maharashtra drew a blank.
Many of the sales representatives were not even aware about the voluntary vehicle scrapping provisions and most gave ample information about how to sell the car to established used car players. However, the fact that a bulk of these registered scraping centres are in northern India and around Delhi did make enquiries to some north-India based dealers a lot more constructive.
According to Globe Toyota MD and CEO, Vivek Datta, “any dealership technically, if they have users coming to them with the request for scrapping, they are supposed to direct them and assist the user.” He explained that the government has authorised certain vendors after their verification. “The only ones who are authorised to dispose-off and issue a certificate, which is acceptable to the government,” and the customers can then show this certificate while registering for a new car to claim the tax advantage, he added.
However, addressing the confusion among customers and relatively low adoption, Datta highlighted that, “It’s more of the execution from the government’s point of view. They have appointed certain authorised vendors who can issue a certificate but directly to the customer if the car is being scrapped.” He believes that the “trend will see a rapid growth in next one year. This trend is bound to catch up very fast.” According to him all “authorised car dealers can give details of the vendors who are authorised to scrap.”
