Ramakanta Biswas

The Odisha government will phase out all vehicles over 15 years old across the State in order to keep them off roads, said State Transport Minister Padmanabha Behera on Monday. 

The move followed the launch of Vehicle Scrapping Policy by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday. 

“As Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement on the occasion of Independence Day, the State government will implement the policy. Fifteen year old vehicles which are unfit for road and their fitness would not be renewed will be scrapped,” Behera said.

“As per the Centre, there are nearly one crore such vehicles of which our State have few lakhs. We have a list of the (registration) number of old vehicles which need scrapping. Decision will be taken as per the Centre's scheme," he added. 

Notably, PM Modi formally launched the national vehicle scrapping policy on Friday and asserted that it will play a big role in modernising the country’s vehicle population and removing unfit vehicles from the roads in a scientific manner.

As per the scheme, those who scrap their old vehicles will get a waiver on the registration fee for their new vehicle and will be entitled to relief in road tax.

It can be mentioned here that the Commissionerate Police (Traffic) in December 2020 had launched a special drive to remove old and unused vehicles parked along the pavements. On the first day of the special drive, traffic police had towed away discarded vehicles from the stretches in Baramunda, Rasulgarh and Kalpana Square areas of the city.

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