No cars, no customers: Dealers and workshops hit as ban on retrofitting CNG kits continues

“Till the ban is lifted, all we can do is repair and maintenance work on old CNG cars,” he says.

In June, the AAP government had banned the registration of petrol-run cars which are retrofitted with CNG kits, after receiving complaints about spurious and sub-standard kits being sold in the market. Over the last two years, more than 40,000 cars have been retrofitted with CNG kits, according to government estimates.

The government has also sent notice to authorised dealers, such as Chauhan, asking them to compile a detailed history of their transactions in the last six months and submit it, as part of the probe into the issue. There are over 200 authorised centres in Delhi.

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Not very far from Chauhan’s shop, a CNG kit dealer, who doesn’t have government authorisation, says he has taken down the display board announcing the services he once offered. Only a board, emblazoned with an ambiguous ‘CNG’, remains on the pavement next to the shop. It is meant to attract harried customers looking for repair shops.

The dealer says, “We have been lying low since the ban. There is a ban on retrofitting CNG kits and we are not getting too many customers.”