Gadkari urges auto industry, stakeholders to promote vehicle scrapping policy

The policy aims at phasing out vehicles which are more than 15-20 years old and encouraging the purchase of new ones.

Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday urged all stakeholders to support the vehicle scrapping policy.

Addressing a stakeholder consultation here, Gadkari said it is a win-win situation for all. The policy aims at phasing out vehicles which are more than 15-20 years old and encouraging the purchase of new ones. Gadkari said that multiple initiatives have been started to build resilient demand for vehicles such as building a world-class network of highways, electrification of buses, and mandatory automated fitness testing of vehicles.

He said the auto original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) should work towards ramping up their production capacity and support the country to become the largest auto industry in the world. "Auto industry is the biggest beneficiary of this policy, they must come forward and support three main pillars," Gadkari said. The minister said the industry should bring more investment in setting up automated testing stations and registered vehicle scrapping facilities, raise awareness amongst citizens about the policy benefits through their dealer network and offer a finalized discount percentage against certificates of deposit obtained by citizens on scrapping vehicles.

Road, Transport and Highways Secretary Anurag Jain urged the auto industry to set up scrap centres and automated testing stations across the country. It was stressed that the said policy is likely to ramp up auto sales by about 8 per cent and contribute about 0.5 per cent to the nation's GDP. Therefore, Auto OEMs must provide unconstrained support to the policy.