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| LET us get one thing clear, the
Supreme court of-India is not interested in compressed natural gas (CNG). It is interested
in cleaning up Delhi's polluted air and converting public transport buses to CNG is one
way ahead. All this talk about clean diesel and now, the R.A. Mashelkar Committee report
on auto fuel policy, which recommends a so-called multi-fuel option for Delhi is clouding
the issue, deliberately. To state the obvious, Delhi is an extremely polluted city. Our air is unhealthy and will become even more toxic, unless we take serious steps to combat air pollution. Delhi has over 30 lakh vehicles on its roads today, growing at a phenomenal rate of over 10 per cent each year. The vehicle fleet is old and as our pollution regulators were extremely late in setting emission norms for vehicles - Euro-I emission norms introduced in Europe in 1992 were mandated only in 1999 - the vehicle fleet is also very polluting.By end 2001, Euro-I vehicles constituted less than 18 per cent of the vehicles; on Delhi roads. As it is impossible to get rid of these vehicles fast the only option is to bring in much better vehicles as fast as possible. This is precisely what the court has been attempting to do sion norms by over five years. In 1999, it gave car manufacturers less than nine months to bring in Euro-II emission compliant vehicles by April 2000, which they amazingly did. Two, the court directed for cleaner petrol with controls on benzene, a known carcinogen and then for cleaner diesel with 500 ppm sulphur as against 2500ppm sulphur diesel which was killing us in Delhi. As this was still not enough, it then turned to public and commercial transport. The number of polluting autos was restricted and moved to cleaner fuel. And even as it asked for an increase in the number of public buses, to combat pollution, it directed that the age of the bus should be limited and that buses should run on clean fuel, namely CNG. This is because CNG is virtually free of particulate emissions, a major cause of concern in Delhi. Tlie only option that competes with CNG is an advanced Euro IV bus, attached with catalyst-based diesel particulate filters, using ultra-low sulphur diesel - less than 50 ppm sulphur. But our politicians hate CNG for obvious reasons that it displaces diesel operators. All efforts of BJP's Madan Lal Khurana to Congress CM Sheila Dikshit are directed to find ingenious ways of delaying and sabotaging implementation of the court order. It is no wonder they have no time to get their act together to get supply and safety issues sorted out. The Mashelkar Committee was constituted just days before the September 30 deadline to phase out buses, hoping that the court would accept the traditional delaying tactics of a new committee and a new report. The ploy failed. Now the January 31 deadline looms large and a new game is afoot The Mashelkar report which conveniently recommends that the government should not mandate a particular fuel (read CNG), instead it should only mandate emission norms, will be presented by these brothers and sisters in arms to the court to argue that therefore, CNG is not the only option for Delhi. - This would be perfectly logical if these friends of the polluters would only explain what this means. What they don't say is that if the Mashelkar recommendations are accepted, then Delhi gets nothing, except dirty air. We already have, because of the Supreme Court directive, Euro II vehicles and fuels, which the Mashelkar Committee generously grants to a few metros in the country. The multi-fuel option would give us Euro-11 diesel buses, which would pollute ten times more than CNG in terms of critical pollutants. Mashelkar tells us to wait till 2005 to get slightly better emission norms - Moving from 500 ppm sulphur diesel to 350 ppm sulphur. Nothing gained but everything lost in terms of public health objectives. The only way we can deal with air pollution is to get serious about it. We hope, this time, the court will pass only one sentence: Implement our order or face contempt charges. Time is not a luxury we have in Delhi. |
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