Noida: As district administrations prepare to implement the ‘no PUCC, no fuel’ rule in Noida and Ghaziabad from Oct 1, commuters told TOI that insisting on pollution under control certificates could trigger queues, delays and disputes at petrol pumps. Fuel station operators, meanwhile, said they would be saddled with the added responsibility of verifying certificate validity before dispensing fuel.The move follows an order issued by Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) on May 15 to control vehicle emissions that contribute significantly to PM2.5, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide levels.A Sector 78 resident, Brajesh Sharma, said the rule could run into the same problems as the ‘no helmet, no fuel’ initiative. Sharma, whose PUCC is valid until Jan, pointed to a timing mismatch: PUC centres operate only for limited hours, while most petrol pumps stay open for around 18 hours. “What if someone reaches a petrol pump after PUC centres have closed and has an emergency?” he said.Sharma also questioned the proposed system’s practicality for daily commuters. “PUCC cannot be obtained online and I already spend half of my commute hours stuck in traffic jams between Noida and Delhi. Now, queuing up to get an emissions test could cause another round of delays,” he said. “It also feels like a bureaucratic way of doing things. It would have been better if the administration had first come up with a system to improve the availability of PUC centres.”He added that during rush hours, there are often long queues of vehicles waiting for a refuel outside the stations. “Now if multipliers are added, it is only going to increase the snarls on the carriageway,” he said.A resident of Orange County in Indirapuram, Vikas Mohan, owns a Renault Scala. He said the petrol pump near his house does not have a PUC centre and the ones that are there are often shut. “The initiative should have been implemented in a phased manner. You cannot make the rules so stringent when we lack infrastructure,” he said.Owner of Sagar Traders petrol pump in Noida, Narendra Kumar, said the administration had not communicated the proposed requirements to fuel station operators. “During the ‘No Helmet, No Petrol’ initiative, we often had to call the police when locals started charging at us. We have eight machines and eight workers. Now, if someone has to enter information and verify PUC details, the administration should provide us with an extra worker. We cannot bear the additional cost,” he said.District supply officer of Gautam Budh Nagar Nilesh Utpal said, “We are a week away from implementing the policy and we are conducting trial runs to identify the problems. As far as queues and delays are concerned, the vehicles will keep moving and the wait time will not be too much.”Officials said the district administrations have been asked to provide police patrolling near petrol pumps during the first 15 days of enforcement to manage any law-and-order issues.Bijay Singh, a PUC centre worker in Noida Sector 14, said the centres have a target to issue around 45 PUC certificates a day initially. “The target is still there and I have not noticed any increase after the order,” he said. “We are aware of the law and order situations that can be triggered because of the new rule. So, we are also putting up cameras here to tackle them.”
