The Supreme Court (SC) mandated EPCA had met on Friday to finalise the 'Comprehensive Action Plan' for air pollution control in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR). The meeting was attended by senior transport department and pollution control board officials of the Delhi-NCR states.
Pitching for parity between tax measures on diesel and petrol, industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) told the Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) on Friday that tax should not be recovered from the user industry of the fuel.
The Supreme Court (SC) mandated EPCA had met on Friday to finalise the 'Comprehensive Action Plan' for air pollution control in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR). The meeting was attended by senior transport department and pollution control board officials of the Delhi-NCR states.
With the Supreme Court hearing the case next Friday, the EPCA will be submitting the plan in a few days. According to sources, the meeting saw heated arguments between SIAM representative Director-General Vishnu Mathur and Sunita Narain, Director-General, Centre for Science and Environment. SIAM is also a member of EPCA.
There were differences over SIAM's recommendations and comments on the comprehensive action plan. According to sources, Mathur argued that for deterring the use of diesel, the users of diesel vehicles should not suffer and thus, equal tax measures should apply to petrol and diesel.
Mathur was dwelling on the 'short-term priority' action as per the plan, which says that "tax measures are needed to nullify incentives for diesel cars over petrol cars."
"In the post 2020 scenario when we have BS VI the particulate matter (PM) content from petrol, diesel will all be the same except oxides of nitrogen and PM 1," he said.
SIAM also recommended that taking into account the wide use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), an expert committee should be constituted to study the long-term impacts of CNG especially in the post-2020 period when BS-VI compliant vehicles will come on roads across the country.
On the issue of new norms, SIAM's recommendations broke out into new arguments against. Mathur said that any product that is meeting environmental standards notified by the government should not be looked at as a polluter or penalized, once it is finalized. To this EPCA chairman Bhure Lal replied, "We are not an extended arm of the government, we have our independent opinion, we are given a task by the court, we have to go and report to them."
Earlier in the meeting, EPCA told officials from Delhi-NCR that they will have to submit detailed data on the vehicle registrations done one or after April 1. EPCA members also discussed that state officials should be vigilant about bogus sales of BSIII vehicles after April 1, especially by those dealing in second hand cars.
The comprehensive action plan seeks drastic reduction in annual average concentrations of pollutants across Delhi-NCR and has set short-term, medium-term and long-term priority action points. This includes measures such as improving air quality monitoring, introducing battery operated vehicles and augmenting public transport services.
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