Diesel vehicles face pollution centre hurdle

Ramkrishan Upadhyay
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, September 11

Owners of diesel vehicles are in a fix as a majority of the pollution centres are allegedly refusing to examine diesel vehicles for checking pollution levels citing various reasons. While some do not have extra machines for checking the pollution level of diesel vehicles, some others are checking only petrol vehicles.

The shortage of facilities to check pollution of diesel vehicles is causing harassment to the owners.

They say under the amended Motor Vehicles (MV) Act, the penalty for not having a pollution certificate has been 

enhanced from Rs 1,000 to Rs 10,000 and they have been facing difficulty in getting the certificate. Suresh Kumar, owner of a diesel car, said he visited three pollution centres  in the  city  today for the renewal of the pollution certificate, but  all of them refused  to check his vehicle saying they were checking only petrol vehicles.

The official figures  of the State  Transport Authority show that only 5,876 diesel vehicles were checked in the past 10 days since  the implementation of the amended  MV Act. Of the 45,285  vehicles checked in the past 10 days for  pollution,  the number of petrol  vehicles   was 39,409. 

There are  35 pollution check centres in the  city. Sumit, another diesel vehicle  owner, said the authorities  should direct  all pollution centres  to start checking diesel  vehicles.

Amanpreet Singh, general secretary of the  Petrol  Dealers  Association, said  checking the pollution of diesel  vehicles  was a tedious  task. The  parameters  were tough in  the case of diesel vehicles. The issuance of the  certificate   had become  totally online. Besides, not many petrol pumps  had  space  for diesel vehicles such as trucks and buses. In such a situation,  many centres had stopped  carrying  out pollution check of diesel vehicles, he said. 

Harjeet  Singh Sandhu,  in-charge of the State  Transport  Authority,  said the department would look into the issue.

Only 5,876 diesel vehicles checked in 10 days 

The official figures of the State Transport Authority show that only 5,876 diesel vehicles were checked in the past 10 days since the implementation of the amended MV Act. Of the 45,285 vehicles checked during this period for pollution, the number of petrol vehicles was 39,409.