Old vehicles ‘unfit’, owners irked

Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Narnaul, February 10

The non-issuance of fitness certificate to diesel vehicles older than 10 years by the local transport authority in view of the NGT’s order has irked owners of private schools in the district.

They have accused the authority of misinterpreting the order and causing inconvenience to them.

The owners under the aegis of the Progressive Private Schools Association (PPSA) have lodged a complaint with the CM Window pleading that the NGT’s order is not applicable to Mahendragarh district as it is not among the five districts of NCR where such vehicles have been banned.

The association has demanded that the state government should issue necessary directions/guidelines to Secretary, Regional Transport Authority (RTA), Narnaul, to restart issuing fitness certificate to school buses older than 10 years.

“It is for the second time during the past three years that the local authority has stopped passing 10-year-old diesel vehicles and 15-year-old petrol vehicles in the district by misinterpreting the NGT’s order of 2015 which clarifies that such vehicles shall not ply in Haryana’s Gurugram, Faridabad, Bahadurgarh and Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad and Noida,” said Anil Kaushik, chief of the association.

He maintained there was no mention of Mahendragarh in the NGT order. The school owners had already pointed out the “misinterpretation” of the order, but no one was paying heed to it, he claimed.