Bhubaneswar: Nearly 8 lakh private vehicles in Odisha, mostly two-wheelers, face the risk of being permanently taken off the road for failing to comply with mandatory pollution under control (PUC) certification, fitness and insurance.Out of the state’s around 90 lakh registered vehicles, these prolonged defaulters fall under the Centre’s newly introduced “permanent archive” category, which deems them unfit for road use.The ministry of road transport and highways in February rolled out a framework that has classified vehicles into four categories—active compliant, active non-compliant, temporary archive and permanent archive—based on compliance with registration validity, fitness, insurance and PUCC.Vehicles with valid documents are considered active compliant, those with some invalid documents fall under active non-compliant, those with expired documents for two to three years are placed in temporary archive, while prolonged defaulters, whose documents had expired for more than three years, are shifted to permanent archive, which includes scrapped, deregistered or surrendered vehicles.Data shows Odisha has a large share of vehicles across these categories, with lakhs already in the permanent archive segment.“Currently we have around 5 lakh private vehicles under 15 years that come under active non-compliant, 70,000 under temporary archive, and 4.5 lakh permanent archive vehicles. Likewise, 60,000 vehicles over 15 years fall under temporary archive and 3.9 lakh under permanent archive categories,” a transport official said.Officials said the reclassification will happen automatically based on compliance checks, and recovery from permanent archive will be allowed only in exceptional cases such as data errors, court orders or migration of legacy data.A senior transport official said the Vahan database will be updated regularly to reflect the latest status, and massive awareness drives will be launched to sensitise motorists.“We will not go for immediate enforcement. Defaulters will be notified through messages on their phones to comply with the statutory rules. They will be given deadlines to renew their documents, failing which their vehicles will be barred from road use,” the senior official said.According to the framework, owners of active non-compliant vehicles must renew fitness, PUC and insurance within a year, failing which they will be moved to temporary archive, and if the lapse continues for two years, the vehicles will be permanently archived.
