The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is preparing to tighten vehicle emissions enforcement, shifting the focus from static laboratory test results to monitoring actual on-road emissions throughout a vehicle’s lifecycle, additional secretary Mahmood Ahmed said on Monday.
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“The real-world emissions are markedly different from what the emission norms that a vehicle adheres to,” Ahmed said at an event to launch a report on sustainable freight movement by IIT Delhi, TERI and the Air Pollution Action Group (A-PAG).
The official noted that factors such as driving conditions, road gradients and driving behaviour lead to significantly different emissions than those recorded during type approval tests.
The government introduced real driving emissions (RDE) testing after BS-6, under which some vehicles are picked up for sample tests and driven under actual road conditions rather than only in laboratory settings.
“This has given us a lot of learning and is one of the huge contributors to how we have gone around designing the BS7 emission norms,” Ahmed said, adding that the government hopes to notify BS-7 this year and give manufacturers time to comply with the new standards.
Ahmed said the ministry was working to strengthen the country’s pollution control regime ahead of the 2026 winter season, acknowledging shortcomings in the existing Pollution Under Control (PUC) certification system.
“There are a lot of gaps in the way the PUC regime is being run across the country,” he said.
According to Ahmed, the proposed changes include geo-tagging vehicles at testing centres, end-to-end encryption of emissions data, and mandatory insertion of the testing probe into the vehicle’s tailpipe, along with eliminating manual entry of emissions data to reduce the risk of manipulation.
The ministry is also redesigning testing equipment and considering stricter enforcement measures, particularly in Delhi-NCR.
“Hopefully, in the next couple of months, certainly before the onset of winter, we are trying to come out with this notification, which further takes the pollution control regime to another stage,” he said.
Ahmed said heavy-duty vehicles remain a priority because, although trucks and buses account for only about 2.5-3% of the country’s vehicle fleet, they contribute roughly 35-36% of transport-related PM2.5 emissions, making cleaner freight movement critical to improving air quality in Delhi-NCR.
Ahmed also pointed to the recently approved Parivarthan scheme as part of the government’s broader strategy to curb pollution from heavy-duty vehicles in Delhi-NCR. The ₹9,585 crore scheme, cleared by the Union Cabinet earlier this month, extends concessions and subsidies to incentivise owners of trucks and buses registered in the Delhi–NCR region to replace their vehicles with BS-VI or stricter emission-compliant vehicles, or electric vehicles (EVs).
