Vehicular pollution checks to become mandatory soon

Want to keep driving your vehicle on Delhi roads? Then make sure you don’t slip up on regular emission checks. For the Delhi government will soon be launching a new pollution check system in the Capital without which you may not be able to secure an annual fitness certificate for your vehicle.

Updated on: Mar 23, 2015, 01:09:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Want to keep driving your vehicle on Delhi roads? Then make sure you don’t slip up on regular emission checks. For the Delhi government will soon be launching a new pollution check system in the Capital without which you may not be able to secure an annual fitness certificate for your vehicle.

Here’s how it will work: Around 350 emission checking centres in the Capital will be linked to the transport department’s vehicle database. When you get a pollution under control (PUC) test done at any of these centres, the information will get updated against your vehicle’s registration number. The same will be used to review whether a particular vehicle should be issued a fitness certificate.

The system, a step in controlling the city’s alarming pollution levels, will later be replicated across the country. It already exists in Bengaluru.

“The transport department will not issue annual fitness certificates to vehicles that do not meet the emission standard or fail to get the periodic test done. Therefore, emission levels will become essential for allowing a vehicle to ply (on city roads),” a senior government official said.

The system will first be introduced for commercial vehicles and in subsequent years include personal vehicles that are older than two years, an environment ministry official said. The decision was taken at a meeting between environment secretary Ashok Lavasa and Delhi government officials on combating air pollution in the Capital.

Around one-fourth of Delhi’s alarming pollution is caused by vehicular emissions. According to the World Health Organisation, Delhi is the most polluted among 1,600 cities across the world. Environment minister Prakash Javadekar had admitted in Parliament last week that the Capital’s air toxicity exceeded WHO standard.

The new system, in which the pollution checking machines will be calibrated automatically by a software, will end human interference in issuing PUC certificates, thus, minimizing the possibility of bribery and corruption.

The Delhi government will also issue fresh bans burning of leaves and other organic products in the Capital, officials said, adding that entry of heavy trucks will also be restricted in the coming months. Experts, however, doubt the impact of such “piecemeal efforts” to bring down Delhi’s pollution levels. “Some drastic steps need to be taken for which the political will appears to be missing,” said an official with the Central Pollution Control Board.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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