Land with Delhi since May ’16 but no buses: EPCA.

NewDelhi: A day after Delhi transport minister Kailash Gahlot wrote to the Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) to implement the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), including the odd-even scheme, in all of NCR, EPCA chairman Bhure Lal did some plainspeaking by telling him there was no need for finger-pointing during a public health emergency. He also pointed out in his reply to Gahlot that his government hadn’t done enough to improve public transport.

Bhure Lal reminded the minister that EPCA had identified land to park 2,000 buses in May 2016 and, with the help of DDA and other agencies, had got it transferred to the government, but no additional buses had been procured so far.

Bhure Lal added that they failed to successfully implement the four-time parking fee hike due to the state of public transport in the city and poor enforcement against unauthorized parking.

“We had also explained in our report (of May 2016) that there was a need to consider multilevel parking as well as better utilization of land with DTC under bus terminals.

DDA has, on our directions, made the changes in the master plan to allow for multilevel parking, but we are finding it difficult to identify what actions have been taken by your government to speed up the procurement of buses for which parking space is already available,” he said.

EPCA argued that hiking of parking charges is an important car restraint measure used around the world. “Therefore, your government must take urgent measures to ensure that the hike in parking fee is possible during implementation of GRAP.”

 

Responding to Gahlot’s demand for directions to other NCR members for implementing odd-and-even, Bhure Lal said they did not give directions for implementing this plan during the smog period even for Delhi as the situation was starting to improve according to forecasts.

He pointed out that a decision on odd-even was to be taken on the evening of November 9 after forecasts submitted by the CPCB task force had shown improvement by November 11 and 12 but that even before EPCA could assess the situation, the Delhi government announced implementation of the odd-even scheme from November 13.

 

Bhure Lal claimed in the letter that there had been a 15-20% reduction in pollution according to SAFAR due to implementation of GRAP in NCR which saw closure of brick kilns, stone crushers and hot mix plants and cooperation from Haryana and UP in diverting non-destined trucks.

However, EPCA said longterm solutions are required with GRAP being just an “emergency” measure. “We need permanent solutions. This is only possible through collaborative action and building an atmosphere of trust and collegial working,” said the letter. “We cannot allow our children to grow up in this environment where doctors are now saying that the size of lungs is reducing because of pollution. But as I said, finger-pointing will not suffice. Action will,” said Bhure Lal.