NOBODY TAKING ACTION TO DECONGEST DELHI: PURI

NEW DELHI : As Delhi’s air quality worsened, Union housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday said though the solution to address the situation had been on the table for an extended period of time but the “actors involved somehow refused to take the requisite action”.

Puri said soon after taking charge in September, he resubmitted the Capital’s decongestion plan that his ministry had prepared in 2016 to the Delhi government for action.

“…. I have been going on saying the decongestion plan has to be put into action and we should not wait till the next crisis takes place. Tomorrow it might rain and the winds come and clear this but the pollution still remains. It’s going to get compounded more and more,” the minister said.

The proposal to decongest Delhi had a slew of measures, including high parking fees based on the locality and congestion tax on private vehicles.

Puri blamed the multiplicity of authorities in the Capital for the failure to tackle the situation decisively. “… unlike New York or London, which have one authority to implement, we have this multilayered system where everybody seems to want to do this in his or her own way till the cows come home,” Puri said.

The minister said the situation got exacerbated because of burning of agricultural crop residue in neighbouring states. “There is a strong clamour for a ban. But the people concerned don’t seem to bother. So it is continuing,” he said.