State’s first ‘Registered Vehicle Scrapping Facility’ to soon come up in Uluberia

Kolkata: The first Registered Vehicle Scrapping Facility (RVSF) will start operating in Uluberia this year in a Public-Private partnership (PPP) model.

Around seven more RVSF will be set up across the state, according to an official.

“Talks are going on with 20 to 25 investors but only one has been given the licence till now,” a senior official said. The approval for establishing this RVSF was given to Eccel Exports Private Limited.

They will have the capacity for 24,000 light vehicles, 24,000 medium vehicles and 12,000 other heavy vehicles. The notification for inviting the investors started from March this year. “The facility will cater to all sorts of vehicles, including e-vehicles and internal combustion engines. But we are initially expecting more ICE than e-vehicles as it has been recently introduced,” Anant Gupta, director of Eccel Exports Private Limited said. He further informed that scrapping in the state has been going on informally i.e. not being handled safely and causing harm to the environment.

“We have decided to plug that gap. We will be safely handling every material while further recycling it. The aim is to maximise recovery rate up to 90 per cent and more from old vehicles which are above 15 years,” he said.

The state Transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty had earlier said that a notice was issued for the scrap yards to be set up in the PPP model. After scrapping, the company will be issuing a certificate to the vehicle owner and when he buys a new one, he will get a subsidy in tax of the vehicle, Chakraborty said.

Kolkata has close to 2.19 lakh commercial vehicles while the state has close to 6.58 lakh vehicles that are above 15 years old. The minister also said that necessary instructions have been issued to start the process of scrapping vehicles within the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) jurisdictional area.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had ordered all vehicles of more than 15-year-olds to be phased out. To form a scrapping policy, the state government wants owners of commercial vehicles to replace their old vehicles with new ones to reduce air pollution levels. According to a news report, the Transport sector accounts for 20 per cent of the PM 2.5.