Cracking down on vehicular pollution, the Supreme Court on Thursday made it mandatory for vehicle owners to produce Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificates for annual insurance renewal. A bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta approved the recommendations of the SC-appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) to ensure mandatory linking of PUC certificates with the issue of annual vehicle insurance. The bench directed that no insurance be granted to vehicles without valid PUC certificates.
EPCA had made the recommendations in its report (on assessment of PUC programme in Delhi and NCR) submitted to the court in April this year. The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had opposed this, saying the two cannot be merged. While insurance renewal happens every year, pollution checks are carried out at regular intervals, it contended.
The bench asked the Ministry to ensure that all fuel refilling centres in the NCR have PUC centres. It gave the Centre four weeks’ time to enure that there are functional PUC centres in the NCR.
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