City has passed litmus test because of will of Delhiites: Gopal Rai

However, he lashed out at several private schools who despite requests by the state government did not chip in with their buses

Monday proved all the apprehensions related to the odd even car number experiment wrong, as office goers  got back to work after a long New Year weekend. The Delhi government claimed the third day also to be a “success” crediting Delhi citizens opting for carpooling in a big way.

Transport Minister Gopal Rai while thanking Delhiites for putting their best foot forward to bring down pollution levels in the city, lashed out at “mischievous” attempts to disseminate false pictures on social media to generate panic of overcrowded Metro stations.

DMRC chief Mangoo Singh stated the Metro saw practically the same number of footfalls as last Monday. Odd-Even scheme has passed the “litmus test” because of the “will of Delhiites”, said Rai. He said, he would like to credit “Delhi citizens” the chief minister, the Delhi police, civil defence volunteers, the media and the transport network – Metro, DTC, cluster buses for making the odd even car scheme a success. He said the level of violations recorded till date was less than one per cent.

The government however lashed out at several private schools who despite requests by the state government did not chip in with their buses. An angry Transport minister said that he would be making the list of these schools public, who had registered with the government and yet did not show up.

The government said that a “review” would be undertaken after 15 days on the implementation and efficacy of the Odd Even experiment and decisions would be taken on implementing it in future. The minister said several commuters had expressed their satisfaction at travel time coming down by half due to less crowded roads and no traffic jams.

Rai also urged Union Road Transport minister Nitin Gadkari to expedite the Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressway projects so that polluting transport trucks do not enter Delhi.

Replying to queries on pollution levels not coming down as expected Rai said, that the DPCC was monitoring the pollution levels. “It has been observed that the NCR border areas around Delhi still are recording high levels as the scheme is not implemented there. However within the city limits pollution levels are coming down.”

In the near future, we shall work with NCR states to implementing such systems since everyone even in these areas can benefit from low pollution levels.

Additional 100 teams of traffic police have been deployed to ensure the enforcement of the scheme that will stay in force till January 15, on weekdays from 8 AM to 8 PM.

Besides, 66 teams of transport department which were working in two shifts of 33 teams each will be working from morning to evening and a special squad of 100 buses will give additional service in four zones with 25 buses each.

Apart from this, 1,000 school buses of DTC have also been roped in, considering the natural escalation in number of commuters, Transport Minister Gopal Rai minister said.

Rai yesterday informed that there have been 567 challans so far by all the concerned agencies and 348 autos have been booked for refusing to ply.