Smog-hit Delhi should consider 'car planning': Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: You have heard of family planning. Should you get ready for car planning – at least in Delhi? Basically, a ceiling on how many cars a family can own.

A policy limiting cars per family will need the Centre and the Delhi government to take on board the Supreme Court’s observation on Friday that the capital’s pollution levels require measures much more “substantive” than odd-even, which the bench critiqued as “half-baked”.

If governments follow through what the court observed, Delhi will join a few Chinese cities in capping car buying. Some Chinese cities have quotas on how many new car registrations a city can have annually and they allow one local resident to own only one car. Guangzhou city in China has an auction and a lottery system for residents to allocate carbuying rights within the quota.

“Maybe we should have car planning like family planning,” the bench said. “Rationalise use of cars,” said the court nudging both the central and state governments to come up with urgent steps to deal with the pollution situation.

The judges didn’t let it rest there. Mukul Rohatgi, lawyer for the Delhi government, had to defend his car usage. Justice Arun Mishra remarked that those owning 5-10 cars have both odd and even registration numbers and are able to circumvent the oddeven scheme.

“You have 10 cars,” Justice Mishra told Rohtagi. The lawyer replied: “I don’t have 10 cars.” The lawyer said he travels less than 5 km every day from his house to the Supreme Court. “My house is only three kilometres away, he said.

Justices Arun Mishra and Deepak Gupta were in no mood to relent, however. They upbraided the Delhi government for providing too many exemptions on the odd-even scheme, which they said hasn’t had any significant impact on pollution levels.

“This is a half-baked thing. Why the exemptions?” Justice Gupta observed during the hearing as the presiding judge Justice Mishra demanded facts and figures on the impact of the odd-even scheme.

The Central Pollution Control Board claimed that the oddeven scheme had less than 3% impact on air pollution levels. The Delhi government, however, claimed the positive impact was between 12% and 15%. Rohatgi said that putting two-wheelers under the odd-even scheme would put inordinate pressure on the public transport system. “The city will collapse. We can’t do that,” he said.