| |
ENVIRONMENT: CLEAN DELHI
Delhi Government Acted Recklessly
Part of the reason
for the current logjam is the ham-handed way the state went about the
business of making commitments earlier. In November 1998, the then transport
commissioner Kiran Dhingra told the Supreme Court that Delhi was considering
CNG for public transport as an option and asked for permission and cooperation
from the Centre. To study the possibilities of CNG and other alternative
vehicle fuels in Delhi, a five-member committee, known as the Environment
Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority was set up. It was led by
the high-profile bureaucrat Bhure Lal, and included Dhingra, D.K. Biswas,
chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board, Jagdish Khattar, CMD,
Maruti, and Anil Agarwal, director of the Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE). The committee recommended CNG for all modes of public transport,
including the fleet of 10,000 buses, and stipulated time frames, which
the apex court adhered to in the rulings.
|
|
|
|
Irate commuters torch a bus
|
|
Critics now point out that the committee lacked
the technical competence to recommend CNG and the decision was based on
questionable studies. But it would make Delhi the first city in the world
to have a public transport system based on CNG, which even cities like
Los Angeles, Sydney and Paris don't boast of (see box). Agarwal, a member
of the committee, defends its decision, and says, "The key problem
is both the Centre and the state had no political will to implement the
court order on CNG." It was not just the will but the money involved.
The conversion of existing diesel buses to CNG would take around Rs 350
crore. While operators would cough up the money with the state subsidising
it only partially, the commuters would have to bear the brunt of the cost.
It was expected to jack up fares by 15 to 20 per cent.
|
|
|
|
|
Passengers clamber
on to the roof of buses on day one |
The state though showed no urgency to implement
the court's orders. In August 1998 the then BJP government started talks
with two major manufacturers, Ashok Leyland and TELCO for converting the
DTC fleet of about 2,000 buses from diesel engine to a CNG engine. Both
companies said they would be unable to convert the engines but agreed
to provide chassis for the new CNG engines. By December 1998, Delhi had
had a change of government and the Congress, led by Dikshit, came to power.
Just before the assembly elections, however, the ostensibly pro-CNG BJP
government in Delhi took a questionable decision. Contrary to its commitment
to the Supreme Court, it placed an order for over 1,300 urban diesel buses.
The Dikshit Government cancelled this order when it came to power in December
1998.
The clock ticked on. 1999 arrived. Six months
after the court order, there was not a single new or converted CNG bus
order. The numbers were still in double digits. In February 1999, Ashok
Leyland received orders for 10 CNG chassis, and in June 1999 TELCO received
another 10 orders. Only in March 1999, did the Delhi Government float
the first global tender for conversion of diesel buses to CNG ones, and
a company called Rare Fuels Automotive Technology (RFAT) went ahead with
the job. By February 2000, 10 buses had been converted to CNG. The score
so far was 10 buses in one year, 9,990-odd still to go. As if the pace
was not slow enough, bureaucracy stepped in again. By December 1999, raft's
approval by the Dehradun-based certifying agency had expired. So the conversion
process ground to a halt.
|
|
|
|
LOW PRESSURE: The CNG drive is hampered by the lack of sufficient
number of pumps
|
|
Two more global tenders were floated. In the
first, Nugas Technologies was found to be the sole competent bidder, and
received an order for 25 buses in November 2000. "We have converted
50 buses in five months. Right now we are converting four buses per day,"
says Yash Arora, executive director of Nugas Technologies. Meanwhile,
the Delhi Government suddenly woke up in the summer of 2000 and realised
that the deadline was less than a year away. It went all out to obtain
1,000 chassis for new CNG buses. By December 2000, the orders were in
place. It also floated fresh global tenders for conversion of such buses.
It was a case of too little too late. Delhi
was stranded on April 1, 2001. The lack of infrastructure aggravated the
problem-only 68 CNG stations had been set up as against the 80 directed
by the apex court. It resulted in long queues of autorickshaws waiting
to fill up. Delhi now has an uphill task ahead. The shortfall is daunting-of
the 12,000 buses only 300 are running on CNG. Of the 50,000 autorickshaws
only 13,000 have been converted. "It's an uphill task but we will
meet it," says Ashok Pradhan, principal secretary (transport).
To add to the confusion, there is a right royal
slanging match over which is the cleaner fuel between two of the country's
most well known green organisations-the Tata Energy Research Institute
(TERI) and Agarwal's CSE. TERI argues that instead of CNG the better and
cheaper option would have been ultra low-sulphur diesel-a fuel that has
caught on in Europe. In India the refineries would have to modify the
petroleum processing technique to achieve such standards. While there
is a fixed cost for it, the advantage would be that there would no need
to convert existing diesel engines or set up new dispensing stations.
Delhi is now using TERI figures to argue in the court against converting
all transport vehicles. But with the court adamant, the Government appears
to be driving towards a dead end. Come September and it faces the danger
of being hauled up for contempt of court.
|
|
METRO TODAY
Web
Exclusives