Getting a vehicle’s pollution-check test done could get expensive as the transport department has made a proposal to hike charges for pollution under control (PUC) certificates.
A senior department official said: “We have formed a proposal for increasing the pollution under control (PUC) certificate rates and submitted it to higher authorities. He said the rate had not been increased since 2011 and the new ones are based on the rate of inflation.”
If implemented, there will be an almost 80% hike in the rate, he said. “On percentage terms, it might sound high, but overall, it would not be much,” he added.
Transport minister Kailash Gahlot said he had received the proposal and was examining it. “It is under consideration,” he said.
According to the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989, every vehicle is required to have a valid PUC certificate after the expiry of a one-year period from the date of its registration. The validity is one year for four-wheeler BS-IV compliant vehicles and three months for others.
At present, for pollution tests of two-wheelers in Delhi, one has to pay INR 60, INR 80 for petrol-powered four-whe elers and INR 100 for diesel-powered four-wheelers. A GST of 18% is levied on this rate.
According to the Motor Vehicles Act, owners can face imprisonment of up to six months or a fine of up to INR 10,000 or both if caught without a valid certificate.
A senior Delhi government official said the pollution test rates were last increased in 2011 while the fines for vehicles caught without a PUC certificate had increased manifold. “We have also got requests from people running pollution test centres who said that it had become difficult for them to meet expenses as they have to pay a heavy rent,” the official said.
PUC certification in Delhi is done in real time and has been integrated with the vehicle registration database.
More than 85% of vehicles running in the city without pollution under control (PUC) certificates are two-wheelers, transport department data shows.
Currently, Delhi has over 97 lakh registered vehicles — 27.8 lakh cars and 69.8 lakh two-wheelers. Of these, about 22 lakh vehicles do not have PUC certificates.
An official said that despite stricter enforcement, many people do not pay fines and escape punishment. “The next stage is putting stricter rules in place to ensure people pay up,” he said.
