India is pumping hundreds of crores into green energy Rs 26,549 crore for renewable energy in the 2025-26 budget alone —while Delhi’s AQI touched 403 last week, forcing school closures and turning the capital into a gas chamber. Yet in Kashmir Valley, the traffic police have chosen the strangest hill to die on: banning electric rickshaws from key Srinagar routes on the flimsy excuse of “traffic congestion.”
There are now 2,850 registered e-rickshaws in Srinagar silent, zero-emission vehicles that drivers bought with loans to replace polluting petrol autos. They have been barred from MA Road and other central stretches while thousands of fifteen- and twenty-year-old diesel commercial vehicles smoke-belching matadors and load carriers continue to choke the city centre every day.
Delhi-NCR already bans diesel vehicles over ten years and petrol ones over fifteen years old; violators are seized and sent straight to scrappage centres. The national Vehicle Scrappage Policy 2025 mandates fitness tests for all private vehicles older than fifteen years from June 2026, with handsome incentives for voluntary scrapping. Madhya Pradesh has gone further, completely banning 15-year-old vehicles from major cities when AQI spikes.
Kashmir has none of this. Over 95% of its commercial fleet still runs on diesel, and Srinagar alone has more than 3.15 lakh registered vehicles — a number that grows unchecked. Winter inversion traps the particulate matter; COPD cases in the Valley stand at an alarming 4,750 per 100,000 people, and transport emissions have risen 30% in the last decade.
Blaming slow-moving e-rickshaws for traffic jams while letting ancient diesel monsters roam free is not enforcement; it is absurdity dressed as administration. The J&K Road Safety Policy 2025 speaks grandly of technology-driven traffic management and promotion of public transport. It is time to walk the talk: scrap vehicles older than fifteen years, enforce BS-VI norms for commercial entries, install ANPR cameras, and create dedicated corridors for clean last-mile transport.
India cannot spend billions on green energy with one hand and strangle its own green vehicles with the other. Kashmir deserves clean air, not selective stupidity.
