India’s Top Court Orders Measures to Curb New Delhi’s Worsening Smog

Appalling levels of pollution in the Indian capital have prompted the nation’s highest court to mandate measures to curb noxious emissions.

Trucks more than 10 years old, and vehicles with diesel engines larger than 2000 cc, will no longer be permitted to enter New Delhi, the BBC reports. The Supreme Court says it will also not be permissible to register vehicles with such large engine sizes for the first three months of next year.

Environmental charges on trucks are meanwhile being hiked and may be widened to include other kinds of diesel vehicles, while taxis will have to convert to natural gas fuels, the BBC says.

Air pollution in New Delhi is reportedly, by some measures, the worst in the world, or at the very least on a par with the notoriously smoggy Chinese capital Beijing. Unlike Beijing, however, Delhi has no system of warning residents when pollution is particularly severe.

[BBC]