Coming down heavily on PWD for failing to execute its orders and asking views from the State and Central Governments, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday said that what we are facing today is not an ordinary problem. A bench headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar said that since the problem of air pollution is of an extraordinary nature, it could be tackled only by extraordinary means.
“Every decision that we take is going to be inconvenient for some people. And for those people, their individual interests may prevail over the general interest. But for us, while making any order, we have to focus on the general interest of the public,” observed the bench. The five-member principal bench of the NGT was hearing the case of Vardhaman Kaushik versus the Union of India and others. The bench was supposed to pass orders on the issue of pollution by burning of material, but it reserved its order for Tuesday.
While the issue of vehicular pollution was to be taken on another date, the bench also gave some broad guidelines to the Central Government, State Government, PWD, Traffic Police and other authorities while asking for their views on the issue before the bench could pass the crucial order on the same. “While people think that the issue of pollution by diesel vehicles is barely a month old when we issued an order to ban old diesel vehicles, we want the citizens to know that we have been struggling with this case for around seven months. But now it has become a forget-about-it situation. And we are not ready to forget,” said the bench, adding that it is aware of all the problems in executing the orders, but something needs to be done.
“The last part of our order says that give us one way through which you will bring down the pollution levels by even one point. That is the most important point of the order. The rest is philosophy… Over 1,000 cars are added to the roads in NCT every day, and there isn’t enough infrastructure available to support them. So we have to do something to balance it out,” it said.
Issuing broad directions to be followed before the crucial May 1 hearing on the issue of ban on old diesel vehicles, the bench said that the Government needs to focus on certain issues like incentives for transferring old vehicles to areas with low vehicle density, for scrapping of vehicles altogether, for car pooling and for allowing only even or odd registration number vehicles on at least weekends (if not the whole week).
On the contentious issue of impounding of old diesel vehicles, the bench said that the question is not of impounding but of how action can be taken for the benefit of the people. “There is no place with the authorities to keep the impounded vehicles. So we recommend identifying of places within 5 km of the borders where impounded vehicles could be kept. Also U-turns near the borders be made so that the vehicles can be redirected if needed,” it said, adding that the next order of the bench may be even harsher and so it wants all the stakeholders to give their views.
The bench also ordered PWD to file a status report on the NGT order on providing adequate parking spaces in lajpat Nagar. The bench will issue an order on pollution by burning of material on Tuesday, after which it will take up the issue of vehicular pollution.