New Delhi, Sept 05: Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) today flayed the government for leaving the standards on diesel untouched in its draft notification to revise in-use vehicle emission norms. The only positive aspect of the draft notification is that it proposes to allow the state governments to set tighter standards on vehicular emission, the NGO said here.

CSE's 'right to clean air team' headed by Anumita Roy Chowdhary said in the first ever revision since the beginning of the Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificate scheme, the draft has not even addressed the road diesel emissions. It is silent on diesel vehicles and maintains a status quo by neither modifying the standards nor the current test procedures..

Roy Chowdhary said this was a serious omission since diesel was the source of the deadliest particles in the air.

"The notification has not laid out test procedures for all types of vehicles adequately to plug loopholes for manipulation and to validate the correctness of emissions tests," she said. Government is aware of the shortcomings of the free acceleration smoke tests (fasts) for diesel vehicles but has still chosen not to act, she said.

The fasts have a very limited use in checking particulate emissions as they can catch only visibly smoking vehicles with malfunctioning engines but not the vehicles with high emissions of finer particles; the main health concern. More

Bureau Report