The joint committee of the organisations of motor vehicle owners has decided to exploit all legal remedies for the reversal of the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) order to take off all diesel vehicles aged more than 10 years from the roads in six corporations in Kerala.
Addressing a press conference after a meeting of member organisations at the office of the Private Bus Operators’ Association here on Saturday, committee chairman Lawrence Babu said the government would be approached for an appeal against the NGT order.
“The order is completely impractical and reached without any scientific basis, or hearing the State government and other stakeholders. It will lead to anarchy and destroy the economy of a consumer State like Kerala. We don’t want to resort to strike, which would put people to hardship, especially at a time when schools are set to reopen,” he said.
NGT’s direction to the State government to verify the availability of CNG betrays the haste with which the verdict was passed.
It should have studied such things before passing the verdict.
Mr. Babu said it was strange that the NGT chose to pass such an order in the relatively small cities in Kerala bypassing larger cities like Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Kolkata.
Even when a similar verdict was passed in Delhi, the stakeholders were given two years to shift to CNG. The direction to remove all vehicles concerned within a month was unfair. There was no justification for passing such a verdict without any scientific study on the extent of pollution in Kerala. A new bus costs around Rs.27 lakh and it was beyond comprehension how it could be recovered within 10 years.
