Delhi’s odd-even scheme: SC revives govt’s exemption rule
Supreme Court on Monday revived a Delhi government notification, issued last year, exempting two-wheelers and women drivers from the oddeven vehicle rationing scheme.
A bench of justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta put on hold a National Green Tribunal direction of 2017 that made odd-even scheme applicable to all vehicles.
As per the graded response action plan (GRAP) for Delhi, approved by the apex court and notified by the Centre, the oddeven scheme comes into effect whenever the particulate matter PM 10 and PM 2.5 rises to 500 microgram per cubic metre and 300 microgram per cubic metre, respectively, for 48 hours.
The court’s stay order came after additional solicitor general AS Nadkarni, appearing for the Delhi government, submitted that it was “impossible to accommodate” two lakh wheeler users in public transport during the road rationing scheme.
Latest reports from the state transport department say of the more than 10 million registered vehicles in Delhi, over 70 lakh are two-wheelers. Women, Nadkarni said, needed to be exempted due to “security reasons”.
The NGT had on November 11
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ordered: “There shall be no exemption to any person, officer and individual and the twowheelers from the ambit and scope of the odd and even scheme. They will be applied with equal rigour to all cases and vehicles.”
Nadkarni referred to the number of two-wheelers and said if the scheme was made applicable for these vehicles, around 25 lakh extra people would be forced to use the public transport.
As per government data, Delhi has only 5,561 public buses against a mandated need of 11,000 buses to cater to the population of nearly two crore. The fleet is so inadequate that during the first odd-even drive (January 1-15, 2016), the government had to extend the winter break for the schools while it used the school buses as public transport.
After the Metro fare hike last year, the need for buses assumed more importance with the daily average ridership of the Delhi Metro having declined from 26 lakh to 24 lakh a day. The ridership continues to be lower than that of the city buses even though the 296km Metro network is the longest in the country.
The second round of the oddeven scheme was enforced last year for 15 days (April 15-30). But that too fell short of expectations with government’s own report stating there were an additional 4 lakh cars and 1.3 lakh two-wheelers plying on the road.