In a bid to check the pollution emitting vehicles from entering the Indian capital city, the Supreme Court of India has reportedly accepted the government's proposal to put different color-coded stickers on the vehicle depending on the fuels they run on.
While blue stickers would be used on the vehicles using petrol and compressed natural gas (CNG), orange-coded stickers would be put on the windshields of the vehicles running on diesel.
The apex court on Monday asked the union government to implement the use of colored stickers on vehicles by Sept. 30.
The stickers will also have year of manufacturing of vehicles that will help authorities to spot vehicles not allowed to enter Delhi.
Presently, more than 10 years old diesel vehicles and more than 15 years old petrol vehicles are not allowed to enter Delhi. But the agencies, particularly traffic police, were finding it difficult to identify the vehicles beyond the permissible limits of existence.
The court also asked the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to consider putting green number plates for electric and hybrid vehicles.
The color-coded stickers would help such agencies in identifying these vehicles with ease, said the apex court.
Traffic pollution has been a big problem in Delhi, even as air quality has witnessed a dip in recent years. Several steps have been resorted to for checking vehicular pollution.
The Delhi government had implemented the "odd-even" scheme for two weeks beginning Jan. 1, 2016, according to which cars with even-numbered registration plates plied on Delhi roads on even dates, while those with odd license plates plied on odd dates.
Two-wheelers, cars driven by women, cars with differently-abled persons and those of senior leaders such as prime minister, president, chief justice of India, senior judges and chief minister of states and union territories were, however, exempted from the scheme.
While the state government patted its back saying that the move had resulted in reduction of "PM 2.5" levels, pollution boards installed at several places in the city had showed no significant reduction in pollution levels.
It had significantly resulted in reducing congestion and traffic on the roads.
