E-Paper
EPCA meet on diesel genset ban in NCR towns
New Delhi
New Delhi
The Supreme Court-mandated Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority has called a meeting with the power and urban development departments of Delhi-NCR to ascertain how a ban on diesel generators will be implemented in these cities under GRAP.
EPCA chairperson Bhure Lal on Tuesday wrote to the government of Delhi and the neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan, asking them to provide a detailed report on the status of electricity supply in cities where diesel genset ban will be implemented under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).
GRAP, which was first mooted in 2017, defines specific measures to tackle different levels of air pollution through the year. It mandates that as the air quality deteriorates to ‘very poor’, diesel generators across Delhi will be banned.
In a meeting with stakeholders last week, EPCA had stated that the ban on diesel generators will be implemented as a preventive measure from October 15, irrespective of the levels of pollution in the city.
Till last year, the ban was only limited to the national capital considering the frequent power outages in these areas. This time, however, EPCA has extended the ban on gensets to the towns of Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad, Gurugram, Sonepat, Panipat and Bahadurgarh.
“It has been brought to the notice of EPCA that large number of residential sectors, colonies, malls and commercial establishments were given occupancy certificates without connecting them to regular power supply,” Lal said in his letter.
In Friday’s meeting, the state governments have been asked for detailed reports on the number of residential neighbourhoods, industries and commercial establishments that are using diesel generator sets as source of power, how occupancy certificates were issued without electricity connections, record of outages and breakdown of power supply and a schedule of the time frame during which these residential and commercial complexes are connected to regular power supply.
Lal said, “EPCA has given enough time to authorities to connect regular power supply. This is a very strange situation in which the state governments are claiming that they have surplus power supply but establishments are not connected to it.”
On October 11, Haryana government’s power secretary had written to the EPCA chairperson asking for relaxations on the ban on the use of diesel gensets.
“The implementation of the directions would have a scaling and massive impact on supply of power to lakhs of consumers, without there being any backup or alternate supply if the ban is implemented,” the Haryana government wrote.
