Delhi govt to instruct aggregators to make a complete switch to electric vehicles

• The Delhi government is going to instruct e-commerce companies, food delivery services and cab aggregators to completely switch to electric vehicles, and petrol pumps to not provide fuel to vehicles without a pollution-under-check (PUC) certificate, officials said.

• Vehicle emissions account for around 38 per cent of the city’s air pollution.

• “The government is going to execute two major ways to gauge vehicular pollution — we will ask all aggregators including Zomato, Swiggy, Ola, Uber etc. to completely switch to electric vehicles. These services constitutes for about 30 percent of the registered vehicles in Delhi,” an official stated.

• “We are also considering directing dealers and petrol pumps not to supply fuel to vehicles without PUC certificate,” he stated.

• Directions under the Environment (Protection) Act in this regard are expected to be issued this week.

• Asked if a deadline will be given to aggregators to switch to EVs, a senior official in the transport department said, “It will be done in phased manner. We will soon publish the draft guidelines.”

• The Delhi Electric Vehicles policy — introduced in August 2020 – aims at increasing the EV share in total vehicle sales to 25 percent by 2024.