New Delhi, Apr 1: The much-touted CNG-fuelled fleet of Delhi’s public transport buses is the one poisoning the city’s air the most due to the Government’s failure to subject the buses to emissions test twice a month, indicated a CAG Report on air pollution tabled in the Assembly on Tuesday.

The government auditor also noted that the laxity in checking the emission levels of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and other public transport buses took place despite the National Green Tribunal’s direction for fortnightly tests.

Staff shortage was also identified by the Report as a bottleneck in effective measures to control air pollution. “Enforcement Branch of the Department of Transport neither had adequate staff nor vehicles mounted with Pollution Under Control equipment for effective enforcement of various provisions of Motor Vehicle Rules,” said the Report that reviewed the government's performance under the AAP rule.

The “Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Performance Audit of ‘Prevention and Mitigation of Vehicular Air Pollution in Delhi”, tabled by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta in the Assembly, said that the Government did not have any real-time information regarding sources of pollutants as it did not conduct any study in this regard.

“In the absence of any information regarding the type and number of vehicles plying on Delhi roads and assessment of their emission load, GNCTD was not in a position to identify emissions from different types of vehicles that are generating significant concentration of pollutants for framing source-wise strategies,” said the CAG Report.

The Report said that out of 6,153 Gramin-Sewa vehicles, only 3,476 vehicles got the emission testing done, that too, only once during April 2019 to March 2020, against four required during this period.

Pointing to poor progress on scrapping of old vehicles, the Report said, “Only 2.98 lakh out of 47.51 lakh ‘End of Life Vehicles’ were de-registered during 2018-19 to 2020-21. None of the 347 ‘End of Life Vehicles’ impounded was scrapped till March 2021.”

The capacity of impounding pits for keeping the impounded vehicles was also only 4,000 vehicles compared to more than 41 lakh vehicles due for impounding and scrapping, it said.

--IANS

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