Green cess collected by Delhi govt since 2015 spent just 7 times in 8 years
According to government records related to ECC collection and usage, of the approximately Rs 1,491 crore collected by the government from November 2015 till July 2023, as much as around Rs 780 crore was sanctioned after court directions for large infrastructural projects.
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According to government data, the first disbursement from the corpus was for an amount of over 90 lakh for creation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) infrastructure in the city in 2016. Over the eight years that it collected the Environment Compensation Charge (ECC), the Delhi government only disbursed funds from the green cess on seven occasions of which five instances were the consequence of court orders, data accessed by The Indian Express shows.
According to government records related to ECC collection and usage, of the approximately Rs 1,491 crore collected by the government from November 2015 till July 2023, as much as around Rs 780 crore was sanctioned after court directions for large infrastructural projects.
While just around Rs 60 lakh was disbursed for expenses at the request of other departments in Delhi from the corpus, an estimated balance of Rs 709 crore, which constitutes the rest of it, is lying unutilised.
The Delhi government did not offer a response on the matter.
The ECC has been collected since the midnight of November 6, 2015, and is imposed on commercial vehicles entering the city alongside toll tax. The decision to implement the charge was taken after it was found that emissions from automobiles were responsible for the bulk of the particulate matter (PM) load that pollutes Delhi’s air.
According to government data, the first disbursement from the corpus was for an amount of over 90 lakh for creation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) infrastructure in the city in 2016.
After this, Rs 15 lakh and Rs 43 lakh were sanctioned for the improvement of road infrastructure and deployment of civil defence volunteers at the Sardar Patel Marg in the years 2018 and 2019, respectively.
The first large payment made from the fund, amounting to around Rs 6 crore, was for the Hydrogen-enriched Compressed Natural Gas (HCNG) project in the capital to the Indian Oil Corporation in 2019 to which another installment of Rs 9 crore was sanctioned in 2020 — both as per court orders.
Payments of Rs 265 crore in 2019 and Rs 500 crore in 2023 were made to the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) for the implementation of the Regional Rapid Transit System project. Apart from the expenses related to SPM Marg, the others were at court directions.
As part of the measure, light commercial vehicles are charged Rs 700 while three-axle vehicles and above are charged Rs 1,300.
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