Hearing a plea of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the Bombay High Court has asked the civic body to ply its vehicles in the city till June 30, 2014 despite a ban on 15-year-old vehicles to curb air pollution.
However, the bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice M S Sanklecha asked the civic body to buy Bharat Stage-IV norms complaint vehicles by June 30.
"We grant relaxation up to June 30, 2014 to vehicles of the MCGM from the prohibition against plying fifteen years old vehicles," said the judges in an order on December 24.
The Deputy Chief Engineer (Solid Waste Management) Transport of the MCGM had filed an affidavit on December 19 saying they were not getting Bharat State-IV norms complaint vehicles. He sought time to procure such vehicles and requested the court to relax the ban for some more time.
The judges, however, put MCGM to notice saying that a number of extensions have been granted to it earlier and, therefore, if no endeavour is made to procure Bharat Stage-IV norms complaint vehicles by June 30, 2014, the court may consider not granting any further relaxation.
A writ petition had been filed in the High Court in 1999 by Bombay Environmental Action Group about air pollution and a committee was formed to go into the issue and recommend steps.
Several orders were passed by the court from time to time. In one such order on October 17, 2001, the court ordered phasing out of 15-year-old vehicles and 8-year-old taxis unless they were converted to run on CNG/LPG by March 1, 2002.
As a result, the entire fleet of taxis which were run on diesel and extremely polluting were replaced by taxis run on CNG/LPG.
