NEW DELHI: Rising temperatures in the national capital scorched the odd-even scheme in the political heat on the second day of the curbs going live. Although the scheme was initiated with the aim of curbing the pollution in the air, the drive has not been able to curb the fumes rising from the political class in Delhi.
Lashing out on BJP MP Vijay Goel’s tweet about breaking the rule in protest on Monday, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said in a series of tweets that “RSS and BJP want odd-even to fail but Delhi will fail BJP yet again. In January too, BJP tried to fail odd-even by orchestrating officers’ strike. People failed BJP and made odd-even success. BJP auto union calls strike.BJP wants odd- even to fail”.
The above reaction was to Goel’s tweet saying accusing the Kejriwal government is putting unnecessary burden on the people without developing the public transport infrastructure. He asserted that the scheme is just a publicity stunt of Kejriwal. Goel further accused that “the revenue that is collected through taxes by the Delhi government is spent on advertisements and not on public transport infrastructure”.
The second phase of the experiment returned to the city yesterday after a gap of two-and-a-half months amid heightened crackdown on violators as opposed to stress on voluntary compliance seen during the first phase.
Meanwhile, the Delhi government released the findings of 74 locations at which ambient air quality was measured by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) of the first day of the scheme. Around 500 people were challaned in the first five hours of the scheme going live.
According to the data released the Particulate Matter at 40 out of 74 locations was within permissible limit. Many believe that Monday will be the real test of the public transport arrangements in the city when schools and offices will reopen after an extended weekend, and taxis and autos going off roads can spell hardship for commuters.