How to collect pollution levy, South Carolina asks Centre

The apex court, which heard a plea filed by top lawyer Harish Salve, also issued an order levying an additional surcharge on commercial vehicles entering Delhi to deter them from entering the city and causing acute air pollution. We will not wait to pass our order… “The state or any other bodies or association can seek modification later if necessary”, the bench said, indicating that its decision will nullify the NGT’s order.

As the central government expressed its stand, the bench of Chief Justice HL Dattu, Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel also asked the presence of Haryana government counsel to respond to the suggestion that several thousand commercial vehicles trying to pass through the national capital for their onward journey should be diverted from Rewari to Panipat. However, it clarified that commercial vehicles carrying essential commodities, food stuff, passengers and emergency vehicles including ambulances, would be exempted from the cess. The cess payable will be Rs 700 for two-axle commercial vehicles and Rs 1,300 on four-axle vehicles.

The petition, filed by the three children between the age of six and 14 months through their fathers, has stressed on their right to be brought up in a pollution-free environment and sought that government agencies be restrained from issuing licence for sale of crackers in the national capital. Subsequently, the apex court had directed construction of Western Peripheral Road also known as Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway and Eastern Peripheral Expressway to take the non-destined trucks away to decongest Delhi.

Now with the Supreme Court set to give the go ahead its only a matter of when it will come into force.

“It is a conceded place earlier than us that vehicular air pollution is likely one of the foremost sources of inferior high quality of air in Delhi….”

The environmental compensation charges are in addition to the toll tax. New Delhi’s air was ranked most polluted out of 1,600 cities worldwide in a 2014 report from the World Health Organization, much of which was linked to vehicle emissions. CSE had monitored nine entry points into Delhi and found the civic boies’ estimation of trucks entering the city was 70 per cent less than the actual figure.

“Adding pollution surcharge on commercial vehicles is more of a temporary solution to the ugly problem of air pollution that India faces”.

“Even if the trucks don’t enter the capital, they are still polluting other parts of the country”, campaigner Nandikesh Sivalingam said in a statement to AFP.