Manish Garg had no plans to buy a car but found himself forced to make that choice because he didn’t want to risk any interruption in his daughter’s access to medical treatment. “My daughter is a special kid and needs to see her doctor in Delhi without any difficulty,” said the retired PSU employee who lives in Noida and has been writing to different govt offices, questioning the rationale of the ban on non-BS VI vehicles being implemented since Nov 1 by Delhi govt.Eventually, he bought one, confining his older car, for now, to his garage. “I understand that many cannot afford to buy a car even if they have to visit Delhi regularly,” he added.Policy inconsistency between Delhi, Haryana, UP and Rajasthan, the constituents of what we call National Capital Region, has been NCR’s biggest bugbear. The jams caused by checks to turn back non-BS VI vehicles in Gurgaon on Sunday and Ghaziabad on Monday were its latest edition, with people suffering because of decisions taken based on geographic boundaries.It’s a setback to the concept of NCR, which is effectively a single unit built around Delhi, comprising the now-sprawling cities of Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad. Within this unit, people may be living in Haryana or UP territory and working in Delhi, or vice versa. In daily life, these boundaries have no meaning, except the reminders about their existence served to people while crossing borders and getting stuck in jams at MCD toll collection points.Like Garg, frustrated residents on Monday questioned why decisions that don’t factor in public inconvenience continue to be taken here when Delhi, UP and Haryana for the first time have the same party (BJP) in office.Ashwani Kumar, who bought a home in Noida after retiring from his Delhi-based govt job, pointed out the bizarreness of a situation where it’s alright to drive a non-BS VI car through Noida or Gurgaon or Ghaziabad but not in Delhi. “These things make the concept of NCR farcical because there is nothing common about policy. If BS IV vehicles are such ‘deadly’ polluters, why should NCR govt also not ban them?” he scoffed.Garg, who has been campaigning for homogeneity of regulations, said when a vehicle is bought, govt charges road tax for 15 years and there is a Pollution Under Control (PUC) certification system in place. “With both rules being followed by vehicles, how can they one day be declared a ‘villain’ in terms of pollution, so much so that they are barred from Delhi roads?” he said.Garg said he had filed a right to information (RTI) with the environment department of Delhi govt asking if there was any research, statistical report or vehicular pollution source-apportionment study available with the department showing that non-Delhi-registered non-BS-VI vehicles contribute heavily to winter pollution. He said he received a reply that there was no such report.Prateek Singh, who commutes regularly from Delhi to Greater Noida, questioned the rationale of a decision that pushed up pollution further because of congestion. “Hundreds of vehicles are being stopped at borders near Delhi in the name of checking them and sending a few of them back. But in the process, thousands of tonnes of tail pipe gases are being pushed into the environment,” he said.Vivek Chattopadhyay, senior fellow at Centre for Science and Environment, said older vehicles are bigger polluters. “We all know that the air in Delhi gets poisonous with rising pollution and older vehicles contribute 10-15 times more pollution than the new ones,” he said, adding vehicular pollution is mostly at the breathing level of up to 10 feet from the ground and is most harmful health-wise.Chattopadhyay agreed that restricting non-BS-VI vehicles can considerably improve air quality that reaches the nose but added that it should have been extended to all vehicles, including those registered in Delhi.
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