JOIN USGovt accused of selective approach to mislead green court
The Central government on Monday was accused by the environmentalists of selectively using research data in an attempt to mislead a green court, which is hearing petitions on the vehicular pollution in New Delhi.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways recently submitted a research study carried out by the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi before the National Green Tribunal to argue that since vehicular contribution in generating dust particle of 2.5 micron size was minimal, banning old diesel vehicle from Delhi roads would not be of much use to clean up the air.
The NGT, on Monday, extended the stay on its previous order on the ban of 10-year-old diesel vehicle till July 13. It asked the Central and the Delhi government to submit their responses within three weeks on why both of them did not comply with the tribunal’s earlier order.
In the previous hearing on May 18, the green panel criticised the Central government for seeking stay of its order, citing the IIT study that concluded vehicles above 10 years were responsible only for a “negligible” amount of air pollution.
The study, however, only referred to private vehicles but was silent on the pollution caused by the commercial vehicles, including trucks, coming to the national capital. “The government ignored other evidences in Delhi demanding urgent, stringent and more complete action on vehicular pollution,” said Anumita Roychowdhury from the Centre for Science and Environment. The IIT study and government affidavits are silent on health risks from direct exposure to vehicular fume especially diesel fume which is of bigger concern as they contain poisonous oxides of carbon, sulphur and nitrogen.
“It is disturbing to note that instead of conveying the seriousness of health risk from vehicular emissions and helping to frame robust action strategies to reduce exposure to vehicular pollution, Science has been used to take a very narrow view of the mitigation strategies to dilute action,” said Roychowdhury.
The NGT directed the Road Transport Ministry to submit its views on capping the total number of vehicles, scrapping old vehicles, car pooling and incentives to those who want to dispose their old vehicles.