EPCA's report on PUC: Transport min. raises objection in SC

The government today raised objection in the Supreme Court over the Environment Pollution Control Authority's (EPCA) report on the assessment of pollution under control (PUC) programme in the Delhi-NCR.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) told a bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta that EPCA has given certain recommendations in its report and has said that these issues were agreed upon by the stake holders, including the ministry.
However, the ministry said it has not given its consent to the report.
"I need some time to respond to the report. We are not agreed but yet it is written in the report that we have agreed," Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the ministry, told the bench.

The solicitor general said he would file an affidavit on the issue and the bench granted it two weeks for the purpose.
The ministry also said they have complied with the directions given on August 10 by the apex court when it had issued a slew of directions including non-renewal of insurance policy of vehicles unless the owner provides PUC certificate to the insurance firms.

It had asked the ministry to ensure within four weeks that all fuel refilling centres in NCR have a functional PUC centre.
In its fresh report, the EPCA has favoured review and upgradation of the PUC norms for pre-BS IV vehicles and also to upgrade test procedure for smoke density of commercial vehicles.

EPCA has said that on September 14, it had convened a meeting to discuss these recommendations and a draft report was discussed at the meeting and the report filed by it was based on the final consensus.
In its 28-page report, the panel said it had analysed the PUC test results for different categories of vehicles in Delhi and NCR submitted by the transport departments in NCR.
"One critical observation was the very poor failure rate of vehicles at the PUC centres -- on an average not more than 2 per cent were found to fail the tests. While corruption and poor testing procedures contribute towards poor failure rate, analysis also shows a very wide margin of difference between the test results and the limit values for large majority of vehicles," the report said.

EPCA has also sought directions to the ministry to develop the protocol for on-board diagnostics (OBD) II integration with PUC programme, which will require checking if the OBD is functioning and specify the type of scanner and computer software to pass or fail a vehicle.
OBD is an automotive term referring to a vehicle's self- diagnostic and reporting capability. OBD-II is an improvement over OBD-I in both capability and standardisation.
"MoRTH has already directed transport departments to ensure that the centres must check if the malfunction light (MIL) is on (red), then the vehicle should be sent back to the manufacturer for detailed check and repair at the workshop.

"What EPCA is asking for in this recommendation is to do a further check to make sure that the OBD is working. Therefore, the aim of integrating OBD II with the PUC is to ensure that the OBD itself is functioning and to check if the information from the memory of the OBD has not been tampered with or erased," the authority said.
The panel has also sought to specify that there was a clear protocol to monitor emissions on roads in real world conditions with the use of portable devices and this would be done for both light duty and heavy duty BS-VI vehicles.

The protocol for these tests would be laid down in advance so that transport regulators and vehicle manufacturers and are aware of requirements and can ensure compliance, it added.
Favouring tighter norms and test procedures for diesel vehicles, the EPCA said that under the current PUC regime only smoke density test is possible in diesel vehicles and no other pollutant can be monitored.
"Visible smoke test is inappropriate as visible smoke does not have direct correlation with particulate matter emissions. In fact, invisible emissions from diesel vehicles can have higher tiny particles," it said.