Exempting two-wheelers will cause chaos: Kejriwal

Private CNG vehicles will not be exempt from Delhi’s odd-even road space rationing arrangement unlike the previous two iterations of the scheme, said chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday, adding that women drivers will continue to be excluded when the road rationing drive starts for 12 days on November 4.

The Delhi chief minister also said that bringing two-wheelers under the ambit of the drive could lead to “chaos”.

He added that the government decided to include non-commercial CNG vehicles in the drive because of rampant misuse of the exemption found during the last two road space rationing arrangements enforced in January and April, 2016. He added that the quantum of fine for violating the odd-even drive will be as per the new Motor Vehicles Act: ₹20,000.

Hindustan Times, on September 24, had reported that the government plans to do away with the exemption earlier given to private CNG vehicles from the odd-even plan.

“In the previous editions of odd-even, CNG vehicles were exempted. But, we observed that CNG stickers used to denote such vehicles were sold in the black market and misused by people to bypass the drive. This defeats the purpose of odd-even,” Kejriwal said during a press conference on Saturday.

Out of over 11 million registered vehicles in Delhi, about 550,000 are private CNG cars. This means that only CNG-propelled vehicles such as auto-rickshaws, taxis, trucks, buses will be allowed to ply during the 12-day arrangement.

The drive will be effective in the city from 8am to 8pm, the government said. To prevent surge pricing during the drive by appbased cab aggregators, Delhi transport minister Kailash Gahlot said directions have been issued to restrict increase in fares up to 1.5 times. “If they increase fares of cabs beyond that, strict action will be taken (against the cab aggregating firms),” Kejriwal said. “Our aim will not be to heavily fine violators, but to request them to follow the rule. But violators will be liable to pay fines as per the new Motor Vehicles Act (MVA),” he said. Fines under the odd-even scheme are issued under Clause 194 of Section 115 of the Motor Vehicles Act, which dictates that a state “restrict” certain vehicles from plying on the streets. This penalty was increased from ₹2,000 to ₹20,000 when the MVA was amended in August.

On continuing with the policy to exempt women from the drive, Kejriwal said that such vehicles will be allowed on only three scenarios. “Either it should be an allwomen car (a car having a woman driver and women passengers) or a car driven by a woman alone. Besides, those vehicles with women drivers and children below the age of 12 will also be exempted,” the chief minister said. When asked about exempting two-wheelers, Kejriwal said that bringing them under the ambit of the drive could lead to “chaos”. “Two-wheelers do pollute more and we believe they should not be exempted from odd-even. But, at the same time given the number of two-wheelers in Delhi, it is impractical to take half of them off the roads. Delhi doesn’t have such a large amount of vacant capacity in our public transport to be able to do that,” he said.

The government’s transport department has, however, suggested inclusion of two-wheelers in the odd-even drive only during off-peak hours. The proposal is yet to be accepted. This means, the registered 7.3 million twowheelers in Delhi and even those crossing or entering the city will be able to ply only from 8am to 11am and from 5pm to 8pm during the drive.