Majority of vehicles in Chennai run without pollution under control certificate
Posted on: 02/Oct/2018 10:37:40 AM
The Centre for Science and Environment recently conducted a study and according to the study Chennai was ranked second to Delhi based on the emissions of heat trapping carbon dioxide, particulate matter, toxic pollutants, nitrogen dioxide in air due to urban commute etc. It was shocking to note that most vehicles in the city of Chennai run without PUC or pollution under control certificate which indicated no compliance with the pollution control norms.
Mr. Bhargab Mitra who is an environmental activist plus professor, department of civil engineering, IIT Madras, spoke about the importance of Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1989. He said as per the act every vehicle must get the PUC certificate every 6 months from an approved PUC centre. He later threw light on the fact about how most private vehicle owners do not follow this rule. In the year 2000 Bharat Stage 4 Emissions Standards was adopted by India is known. Pollution under control or PUC is the only existing mechanism to monitor the emissions of the vehicles and this PUC ensures that the vehicles adhere to the above mentioned emissions standard adopted by India.
Within the Chennai city limits, there are as many as 45 authorised emission testing centres inside the jurisdiction of RTO or regional transport offices plus 17 centres attached to Meenambakkam and Tiruvallur etc. The professor belonging to the civil engineering department of IIT Madras later highlighted about how not many vehicle owner sign up for the emission tests for every 6 months. He added that these vehicle owners would get their vehicles serviced but not get this essential PUC certificate.
In Ashok Nagar in Chennai there is a PUC testing centre owned by Mr. Abu Backer. He spoke about how every day on average around 10 vehicles comes to his centre for testing. He then explained about how most of them are cabs and autos that required the certificates to ply with Ola and Uber.
He added that private vehicle owners are not aware about the PUC certificate that needs to be renewed. Only when situations like changing the owner of vehicle etc arises then the vehicle owners go for the renewal of PUC certificates. To get a ‘pass’ certificate for their vehicles, the owners pay a bribe amount of Rs 500 but the basic test costs just Rs 40. This was confirmed by this Ashok Nagar based PUC testing centre owner. One important point is there is an absence of a system to check the status of PUC certification for all the vehicles in Chennai city. To cater to the number of vehicles in Chennai the number of PUC centres present are not sufficient. Executive director, research and advocacy, Anumita Roychowdhury spoke about how initially it took 60 years (1951 to 2008) for India to cross the 100 million registered vehicles mark and said that in the next 6 years (2009 to 2015) next 100 million were added. This has led to a situation where according to the transport department data, 96 percent of the vehicles in TN might not have a valid PUC certificate.
