PUC drive coughs to a halt

While the RTO authorities admit, on one hand, that they are not equipped to check diesel vehicles, an RTO official went on record to say, “The department has recently come across several cases of authorised parties — more than 100 dealers are so authorised — not checking the vehicles before providing the PUC certificates”.

Questions are inevitable. Has the State government’s PUC drive served any purpose? Is the department actually equipped and trained to check vehicles? Has the new law, like dozens of others before it, only succeeded in increasing corruption in the department?

Although local RTO officials said they had received no intimation of any change in the PUC policy, State Transport minister Bimal Shah said recently that since there were charges of rampant corruption in the issuing of PUC certificates, he was planning to overhaul parts of the policy to make it more practical and effective.

The PUC drive in the city, which picked up somewhat after a belated start, has always had a lackadaisical response from the RTO, partly because it was the certificates were not issued directly by them. Department inspectors do check vehicles randomly once a fortnight, but that is motivated more by the progress report it has to submit to the transport commissioner every 15 days.An RTO official defended their position thus: “The department is highly understaffed and even if all the officers work simultaneously, the work load (registration, routine checks, transfer of ownerships, providing licences, etc) is not completed. Where is the time to carry out effective PUC checks?”

With close to 50,000 new vehicles added to the streets of the district every year, the department has, between October 1997 to March 1998, zeroed in on just 1454 vehicles that have not acquired the PUC certificate. Though it did collect fines of Rs 1.46 lakhs, the low figures are an indication of the unintense drive.

And the department has still not commenced inquiry into even one case of alleged irregularities among dealers accused of issuing certificates without checking vehicles.