Physical presence of vehicles must to ‘get pollution certificate’

Kolkata: The state Transport department is all set to make the physical presence of vehicles at Automated Emission Testing Centres (AETCs) mandatory at the time of issuing Pollution Under Control Certificates (PUCC).

The move comes in the wake of the department noticing that a large number of vehicle owners have been obtaining PUCC for their respective vehicles by paying a hefty service charge without physically producing the vehicle at AETCs, thereby indicating irregularities involved in the issuance of Pollution Under Control Certificates.

“We are committed not to compromise with our efforts to control air pollution and for this, a new PUCC version is being launched to ensure the physical presence of a vehicle at AETCs at the time of issuing PUCC by leveraging a mobile App (Android only),” a senior official of the state Transport de-partment said.

A notification issued by state Transport Secretary Saumitra Mohan states that the department has geofenced all AETCs that will help the authorities track the actual presence of the vehicle at the centre before issuing a certificate.

Geofencing creates a virtual boundary around a geographical location to track

entries and exits.

A recent air pollution source apportionment study by the National Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) has found vehicular emissions share a major pollution load in the city. The department is hope-ful that this move will help root out heavily polluting vehicles and thus contribute to improvement in air quality.

The earlier version required just a photograph of the vehicle’s number plate but the new version will also require a landscape image of the vehicle at the emission testing centre, a live video of the emis-sion test captured via the PUCC app and the geolocation of the mobile device capturing the photo and video.

Director of the state Transport Directorate has been instructed to introduce this new web-based cen-tralized application throughout the state of Bengal and instruct all AETCs under his control so that they strictly follow the latest Pollution Under Control Certificates version.