Go Green is the mantra worldwide. It essentially means environment friendly. Go Green denotes ‘save environment and check pollution,’ but it also connotes currency notes! No wonder Go Green is literally giving a lot of ‘greenery’ to unscrupulous employees of Transport Department, the Traffic Police and owners of the pollution checking centres in the Capital city.

A big racket is flourishing in the state in the name of Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificate for vehicles. Even new vehicles, non polluting ones, require a PUC just after six months of rolling down the showrooms! Many owners are unaware and that is how they get caught on the wrong foot, leaving ample scope for the police to slap heavy fines or to extract the ‘greenery’ to turn a blind eye to the violation!

What do you usually carry in your vehicleIJ Your Driving licence, Registration papers and insurance! When the Police check your documents and demand a pollution control certificate, you realise, oh! You do not have the pollution control certificate.  Don’t worry! It’s available for just Rs 50 to 100 and you need not even send your vehicle for the physical verification!

The PUC certificate, which is valid for six months, is officially issued for just Rs 40 to Rs 80, but its absence attracts a fine of Rs 1,000 for the first offence. The fine goes up further to Rs 2000 for every subsequent offence, according to Jharkhand Government’s transport department website - http://jhtransport.gov.in/pollution-control.html.

The website of Jharkhand Transport department on pollution control is exhaustive on the ill effects of pollution on human health and ecology. Interestingly, it says a new vehicle needs a PUC after one year, but the traffic police demand it after six months only!

But, the harsh reality of the entire exercise to Go Green is a big farce at least in Jharkhand. An example is The Pioneer managed the PUC of a bus of Bihar showing it as a Hero Honda motorcycle!

The Pioneer gave the registration number of a luxury bus of Bihar State Tourism Development Corporation bearing registration number  BR-01PE-2158  (Pic attached) to a pollution checking centre at Kutchery Road, Ranchi, showing it as a registration number of a Hero Honda motorcycle and how

The centre charged Rs 50 to issue the PUC certificate (pic attached) valid for six months, upto December 9, 2017. The pollution checking centre did not even demand the Registration papers for verifying if the details are correct!

No wonder, the number of pollution checking centres is on the rise in the state is expected to rise manifold in view of the regular “checking” drives of traffic police!

Traffic Police of Mumbai and many cities have already stopped checking PUC and insurance papers mainly because it results in a lot of arguments between on duty traffic policemen and motorists and wastes a lot of time of both, but Traffic Police in Jharkhand carry on the exercise of checking Dl, RC and PUC very diligently. Not surprisingly, these days the traffic policemen are not sighted on their posts, but on the side of the roads, conducting “checkings.”