Scrap First, Ask Later

Welcome back to The Apex Angle, where I skip the fluff and dig into the stuff that actually matters. This month, it's not horsepower or digital dashboards in the crosshairs - it's something far more existential: survival. Not yours or mine, but that of your old faithful car. Because if you're in Delhi and your vehicle is over 15 years old, you're not just outdated. You're out of fuel. Literally.

- Rohit Paradkar

Almost overnight, lakhs of vehicles were effectively mothballed. Not scrapped. Not de-registered. Just... starved. No grace period, no warning. One day you're crawling through Delhi's rush hour, the next, you're a driveway sculpture with an empty tank. It looks bold. It feels urgent. But is it policy with purpose, or just performance?

Let’s be clear: Delhi’s pollution problem is as real as the smog you can chew in December. The city routinely competes for the top spot on global AQI shame lists. Something had to be done. But this move? It feels like policy drafted on a WhatsApp forward.

The new diktat is brutally simple: petrol vehicles over 15 years old, and diesels over 10, can no longer be refuelled in Delhi. No notification, no awareness drive, and no real push to transition. Just one fine morning, thousands of owners find out that their cars and bikes are suddenly un-fuelable - not banned, not confiscated, just... unusable.

Fuel pump attendants aren’t the gatekeepers anymore - the cameras are. Most petrol stations now have AI-powered surveillance systems with number plate recognition and loudspeakers installed. The moment an older registration is detected, the system blares out the vehicle number, warning the pump not to issue fuel. Simultaneously, nearby police units are notified to initiate legal action against the ageing vehicle and its owner.