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The Full Commission of the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas (CAQM), at its 29th meeting on 18 August 2026 chaired by Rajesh Verma, approved Direction No. 102 mandating a phased shift to cleaner Light Goods Vehicles (LGVs) in Delhi-NCR.
LGVs are only about 1.2% of the active vehicle stock but contribute roughly 3.3% of particulate matter emissions from the total active fleet, which is the stated reason for singling them out.
Registration of Diesel/Petrol/CNG N1 LGVs will be restricted from 1 January 2027 in Delhi and 1 July 2027 in five High Vehicle Density districts; N2 LGV restrictions begin 1 January 2028 and run in three tranches to 1 January 2029.
Direction No. 103 folds CPCB's Environmental Guidelines for Stone Crushing Units, 2023 into the Consent to Operate conditions of NCR stone crushers, backed by video surveillance, PM2.5/PM10 sensors and wheel washing.
The Commission also approved Rs. 3,25,56,393 for four air-pollution R&D projects over two years and noted Environmental Compensation of Rs. 61.85 crore imposed on six thermal power plants for missing 2024-25 biomass co-firing targets.
Under the vehicle classification used in the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, the letter N denotes a motor vehicle used for the carriage of goods. Category N1 is a goods vehicle with a maximum mass (gross vehicle weight) not exceeding 3.5 tonnes - the delivery vans, small pickups and light commercial vehicles that do most last-mile freight in a city. Category N2 is a goods vehicle exceeding 3.5 tonnes but not exceeding 12 tonnes. This is why Direction No. 102 hits N1 first and N2 a year later: N1 is the numerous, fast-turning-over urban delivery fleet, N2 the heavier intercity segment where replacement cycles are longer.
Simple Analogy: N1 is the courier van at your gate; N2 is the mid-size truck that stocks the neighbourhood warehouse.
An emergency, pre-emptive protocol for Delhi-NCR that tightens curbs in four stages as air quality worsens; notified in 2017 and now invoked and enforced by CAQM.
Key: Stage-I 'Poor' (AQI 201-300), Stage-II 'Very Poor' (301-400), Stage-III 'Severe' (401-450), Stage-IV 'Severe+' (above 450). Measures are cumulative - each stage carries forward the previous stage's restrictions - and stages are invoked in advance of the AQI actually reaching the band, on IMD/IITM forecasts.
A national programme of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched in January 2019 to improve air quality in cities that fail national standards.
Key: Covers 131 cities (non-attainment and million-plus cities) across 24 states; target revised to a reduction of up to 40% in PM10 levels, or attainment of the national standard of 60 micrograms per cubic metre, by 2025-26. City Action Plans are implemented by urban local bodies.
Vehicle emission standards limiting particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen from new vehicles.
Key: Enforced nationwide from 1 April 2020. India leapfrogged directly from BS-IV to BS-VI, skipping BS-V; BS-VI is modelled on Europe's Euro 6/VI standards. Direction No. 102 works on top of BS-VI by restricting the fuel and vehicle category itself, not just the emission limit.
A CPCB guideline package for controlling fugitive dust from stone crushers.
Key: Direction No. 103 gives it teeth by incorporating its dust-mitigation measures into the Consent to Operate conditions of NCR stone crushers, so non-compliance becomes a consent violation rather than a guideline lapse.
Requires thermal power plants to burn a share of biomass pellets - including paddy straw - along with coal, giving crop residue an economic use instead of being burnt in the field.
Key: CAQM enforces it through Environmental Compensation: Rs. 61.85 crore was imposed on six plants for failing 2024-25 targets, of which Rs. 30.92 crore had been received in compliance with interim orders of the National Green Tribunal.
Statutory body under the CAQM Act, 2021, with exclusive jurisdiction over air quality management in the NCR and the adjoining areas of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh; issues binding directions, invokes GRAP, imposes Environmental Compensation and orders closures. It replaced the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA), which had been constituted on Supreme Court directions.
Apex statutory pollution control body under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; frames the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, issues technical guidelines such as the Environmental Guidelines for Stone Crushing Units, 2023, and deploys the Flying Squads CAQM uses for independent verification.
Specialised environmental tribunal; its interim orders governed the 50% recovery of Environmental Compensation from the six non-compliant thermal power plants.
Grant and enforce the Consent to Operate for industrial units, verify compliance in closure-resumption cases and recover Environmental Compensation concurrently, under CAQM's revised procedure.
CAQM's field enforcement arms - the ETF decides on inspections, closures and resumptions, while Flying Squads carry out the independent or random verification that can reopen a closure case.
Creates CAQM and gives its directions statutory force. It replaced an Ordinance promulgated in April 2021 and received presidential assent in August 2021. Section 14 makes contravention of the Act, its rules, or any order or direction of the Commission punishable with imprisonment up to five years, or a fine up to one crore rupees, or both.
The umbrella environmental legislation under which central pollution-control powers, notifications and standards flow. Passed in May 1986 and in force from 19 November 1986, it was enacted to implement the decisions of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and in the wake of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
Established the Central Pollution Control Board and the State Pollution Control Boards in September 1974 - the institutions that issue and enforce the Consent to Operate now being used to bind stone crushers to CPCB's 2023 dust guidelines.
Constituted the NGT, whose interim orders set the 50% Environmental Compensation recovery from the six thermal power plants noted at this meeting.
Supplies the N1 (up to 3.5 tonnes) and N2 (above 3.5 and up to 12 tonnes) goods vehicle categories on which Direction No. 102's phased registration restrictions are built.
| Stage | Air quality category | AQI range |
|---|---|---|
| Stage-I | Poor | 201-300 |
| Stage-II | Very Poor | 301-400 |
| Stage-III | Severe | 401-450 |
| Stage-IV | Severe+ | Above 450 |
The yardstick behind all of this. CPCB's 2009 standards set PM2.5 at 40 micrograms per cubic metre as the annual mean and 60 over 24 hours, for industrial, residential, rural and other areas alike. NCAP's revised goal of reaching 60 for PM10 is an NAAQS attainment target.
The biomass co-firing mandate enforced through Environmental Compensation is the demand-side half of the paddy-straw problem - it creates a paying buyer for residue that would otherwise be burnt. One of the four R&D projects funded at this meeting is on forecasting rice residue burning.
N1 vehicles are the backbone of last-mile delivery, so a registration curb on diesel, petrol and CNG N1 vehicles is in effect an electrification push for the delivery fleet - the policy touches logistics costs, not only emissions.
The court-constituted predecessor CAQM replaced in 2021 - the shift from a Supreme Court-appointed authority to a statutory commission with penal powers is a standard example of judicial improvisation being converted into legislation.
GS Paper 3 > Environment > Environmental Pollution and Degradation; GS Paper 2 > Statutory and Regulatory Bodies
General Awareness > Environment and Current Affairs
Environment > Air Pollution Governance
Delhi-NCR air pollution, CAQM and GRAP recur every winter in Prelims and Mains; the CAQM Act 2021 has been a repeated Prelims subject since its enactment.
Goods vehicles under the Central Motor Vehicles Rules - N1 up to 3.5 tonnes gross vehicle weight, N2 above 3.5 and up to 12 tonnes.
The licence a pollution control board grants an industrial unit to run; conditions written into it are legally enforceable, which is how CPCB's stone-crusher dust guidelines acquire force under Direction No. 103.
A monetary levy imposed on a polluting unit for a specified violation, recovered by the state pollution control boards; used here against thermal power plants that missed biomass co-firing targets.
Pollutant releases that escape from an open source such as a crusher yard or a road surface rather than from a chimney, and therefore cannot be captured by stack monitoring.
The five NCR districts - Gurugram, Faridabad, Sonipat, Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar - placed in the second tranche of Direction No. 102's registration restrictions.