Deadline nears, but NCR fuel pumps yet to install number plate recognition cameras

With barely two months left for Haryana’s “No Pollution Under Control Certificate (PUCC), No Fuel” rule to come into force from October 1 across the state’s NCR districts, not a single one of the 2,780 fuel stations in the zone has installed the mandatory Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras required to enforce it.

The fact came to light during a recent review meeting between Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini and Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav.

The NCR zone of Haryana comprises 14 districts — Gurugram, Faridabad, Rohtak, Sonepat, Panipat, Karnal, Rewari, Jhajjar, Palwal, Nuh, Bhiwani, Charkhi Dadri, Mahendragarh and Jind.

The two leaders held a review meeting in Gurugram on July 24 to assess Haryana’s preparedness for the winter pollution season. The meeting covered the continuous ambient air quality monitoring network, electric buses, action against end-of-life vehicles and the rollout of the ANPR system.

Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini had then said there should be no laxity in implementing these measures.

The rule is aimed at denying fuel to vehicles that do not have a valid Pollution Under Control Certificate. Its enforcement depends on cameras installed at fuel stations to automatically scan a vehicle’s number plate and cross-check it in real time against the pollution certificate database before fuel is dispensed.

With zero installations recorded so far, however, the mechanism meant to make the rule enforceable does not yet exist on the ground.

The shortfall is likely to be felt most acutely in Gurugram and Faridabad, the two districts that carry the heaviest vehicular load in Haryana’s NCR belt and are also among its most industrialised and densely populated urban centres.

Both cities lie on high-traffic corridors connecting to Delhi and have large commercial vehicle fleets. They also record some of the worst air quality readings in the state during winter, making them the areas where camera-based enforcement was expected to have the greatest impact — and where its absence could prove most consequential.

According to various studies and reports, vehicular emissions remain one of the major contributors to toxic air across Gurugram, Faridabad and the wider NCR for nearly six to seven months of the year, from falling wind speeds around October through peak winter smog and lingering haze into February-March.

With roughly nine weeks remaining, officials will have to move at an unprecedented pace to make the cameras functional at every NCR fuel station by October 1.

The situation has also raised questions over whether the deadline will hold or whether enforcement will initially begin in a diluted, manual form while the camera rollout catches up.