New Delhi: The govt is set to roll out an online system to detect diesel and petrol vehicles older than 10 and 15 years plying on Delhi roads and those without valid fitness and pollution certificates.

The “e-detection” system, which will enable the transport departments to find out where such vehicles are registered to generate e-challans automatically, will start by Diwali, sources said.

This will be a big deterrent for old polluting vehicles from any state entering Delhi roads. Though over a decade old vehicles are not allowed to ply on city roads, enforcement agencies can’t implement it fully as physically checking each vehicle entering from other states is impossible. E-detection addresses this issue to a large extent, officials said.

Under this system, as soon as vehicles cross National Highway toll plazas at Delhi borders, the details from FASTags fixed on vehicles, photograph and registration will be captured. This data will be shared with NIC for matching with the Vahan database, the central repository of all vehicles which has details of the year of registration and validity of documents such as fitness, permit and pollution under control certificate. The transport department concerned will be able to generate e-challans for violation of rule and initiate other actions under the Motor Vehicle Act. Sources said there have been rounds of deliberations among stakeholders including Delhi govt’s transport department, road transport ministry and NHAI for expeditious launch of the new mechanism.

“The target is to start this before Diwali when Delhi faces acute air pollution,” said a source. The official added that there are around 52 entry points, including through NHs, where cameras will be installed to capture the details of FASTags and vehicle registration numbers. To begin with the NHAI will share the details of vehicles passing through its toll plazas every few hours for matching with Vahan database and subsequently it will be made real time. The Centre is looking at a gradual roll out of this system across the country to check violations of transport and traffic rules.

TOI has learnt that at present there are about six crore out of the 38 crore registered vehicles across the country are unfit, but there is no clue of how many of these are plying on roads. “Some of these might have been scrapped by unorganised scrap dealers or are lying in yards. Once we have a mechanism to detect unfit vehicles , it would be easy to enforce their scrapping,” a source said.