The second session of the 8th Delhi Legislative Assembly concluded last week. Like the inaugural session, the Budget session too saw large transaction of legislative business. This augurs well for the city and a pleasant departure from what one witnessed during the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government regime, when the floor of the house was reduced to the status of a platform for abusing ruling party’s political rivals.
While a large portion of the legislative business during the Budget session was consumed by the presentation of the Annual Financial Bill and the passage of the grant proposals, the session concluded on a very disquieting note, to say the least, with the presentation of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the state of pollution in the city. The report suggested that the citizens were forced to breathe poisonous air for days amounting to more than two and a half years during the past five years.
According to the report, vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, construction dust, and stubble burning were the primary contributors to Delhi’s deteriorating air quality. Of the four factors, three could have been well handled by the previous AAP government without putting the blame on anybody.
It also puts blame at the door of the municipal bodies for improper waste disposal, and biomass burning, which aggravated the situation. The municipal corporation during the period under review was controlled both by AAP and the BJP.
The report also chastised the authorities for announcing several measures to control pollution, which all remained non-starter on account of poor enforcement and lack of coordination among agencies. The report also points towards deficient governance which worsened air quality. The report says, out of the 47.51 lakh overage vehicles required to be deregistered from 2018-19 to 2020-21, the government deregistered only 2.98 lakh such vehicles, the report stated.
It adds, 347 impounded vehicles were not scrapped by the deadline, and the capacity of impounding pits was found to be grossly insufficient, with space for only 4,000 vehicles versus 41 lakh vehicles awaiting scrapping. The report adds that as per Supreme Court mandate, Inter State Bus Terminuses (ISBTs) have to be built close to borders to stops the buses at the city’s periphery.
In 2013, when AAP came to power, three ISBTs existed - Kashmere Gate, Anand Vihar and Sarai Kale Khan. The AAP government in the past 10 years did not establish the two new ISBTs at Dwarka and Narela.
Meanwhile, in the midst of the discussions on the issues raised in the report, former Environment Minister Gopal Rai intriguingly came out with a statement claiming that the CAG doesn’t point towards any corruption on the part of the government.
“The CAG report on air pollution, which has been presented in the assembly, is being scrutinized by BJP leaders to find corruption, but not a single line of corruption has been found so far,” Rai is reported to have said in a statement.
This could well be the case of guilty conscience pricking the heart as there are sufficient indication in the report about the malpractices indulged into in the name of controlling pollution. The report says, over 1.08 lakh vehicles were issued Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificates despite emitting toxic levels of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbons (HC) beyond permissible limits. Multiple vehicles were issued certificates at the same time, sometimes within a minute of each other, the report adds. The report further indicts the government, claiming that between 2015 and 2020, nearly 4,000 diesel vehicles that exceeded pollution limits were still certified as compliant, allowing them to remain on the road despite their high emission levels. The pollution checks are done by vendors licensed by the government.
Here in this case these vendors, as indicated in the report, were blatantly indulging in the acts of corruption. Two questions arise here – whether these vendors were not being monitored by the government agencies; and if yes how did they openly manage to flaunt provisions and threaten human life. This raises the next question whether they were indulging in the criminal act with some protection from somewhere by somebody possibly in the government.
The onus is on the Rekha Gupta government to identify and punish those who entered into criminal conspiracy to poison city’s air.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice