Since the Supreme Court started coming down heavily on the Delhi and the Central Governments over air pollution in the city in the first half of November, there has been a jump in actions in this regard, especially in the checks on polluting vehicles, data accessed by The Hindu shows .
The average number of inspections carried out by the Delhi Transport Department every day to check visibly-polluting vehicles and ones without a Pollution Under Control Certificate has increased by 248.1%.
From November 1 to 15, a total of 1,97,973 such inspections were done, while between November 26 and December 6, i.e. 11 days, 5,05,468 inspections were carried out.
On November 17, hearing a case of air pollution, Chief Justice N.V. Ramana said, “In the entire country, what I have observed as a judge, and earlier as Advocate General, is that the bureaucracy has developed an inertia, an apathy... They wait for the court to pass an order even on things like how to stop a car or a fire by using a bucket or a mop.”
The court on December 2 gave the Government 24 hours to find a way or make way for the Supreme Court to act on air pollution.
Construction sites
There is also an increase in actions ranging from checks at construction sites to the length of road covered by mechanical road sweepers and the length of road on which water sprinkling has been done.
Between November 17-25 and November 26-December 6, the number of km of roads cleaned by mechanised road sweeping machines daily jumped by 23.9%. Also, the number of km of roads on which water sprinkling was done went up by 34.8%, as per the data.
The jump is mainly due to increased monitoring and daily reports on actions taken by the departments concerned, which are sent to the Chief Secretary, officials said.
“The Environment Department has been monitoring reports from different departments every day and also giving instructions on shortcomings,” they said.
