Transport dept starts checking polluting vehicles

Transport commissioner, RS Verma, who took charge only last week, had issued orders for the drive, reports HT Correspondent.

The transport department on Wednesday launched a weeklong drive to check vehicles violating pollution control norms.

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Transport commissioner, RS Verma, who took charge only last week, had issued orders for the drive.

The teams, formed for the drive, held camps at around four places to check vehicles. Verma and other senior officers of the department personally visited the spots to take stock. However, a visit to these checking points revealed that mainly two-wheelers were being targeted. The four-wheelers checked were either cars or those vehicles, which did not speed away.

The constables, who were given the task of stopping vehicles at the petrol pump near the DM residence, were applying 'pick and choose' policy. While they stopped almost all two-wheelers and medium-sized cars, heavy vehicles and fast-moving vehicles like the Innova, Qualis, Safari, Sumo etc were generally ignored.

Though, in doing so, they were not entirely at fault. The four constables deputed for the job had just a small one baton to share. "We have not been given even batons. How will any one take us seriously?" questioned one constable. He said that he could not endanger his life by coming in front of big vehicles.

When some fast-moving vehicles were signaled by the constables to stop, they just sped away, some of them just managing to not hit the constables. So, it was mostly the young boys, poor tempo and car drivers, who were made to cough up the penalty of Rs 1000, if their vehicles violated the pollution control norms.

The strong and mighty and those, who could afford to ignore the law, did not even stop and sped away, leaving behind a helpless-looking enforcement squad. Additional transport commissioner (Enforcement), Rameshwar Dayal in the evening claimed that a total of 160 vehicles, of which 157 being diesel-driven vehicles, were checked. 16 vehicles were fined for violating emission norms, he said.