Kerala Transport Minister AK Saseendran hailed the High Court’s stay on the National Green Tribunal’s order to take all diesel vehicles older than 10 years off the road in six cities in the State.
“The State government welcomes the stay,” he told the media. He said the stay would give the government time to plan its future steps on the NGT order. The government had earlier discussed with legal experts on challenging the order in the Supreme Court.
However, the Lawyers Environment Awareness Forum (LEAF), on whose petition the NGT’s Kochi circuit branch had made the order, has said it would challenge today’s stay order by a single bench before a division bench. The LEAF had also appealed against an earlier stay allowed by a single bench on the NGT’s order to stop registration of all new diesel vehicles above 2000 cc in the State.
The coordination committee of associations of vehicle owners and trade unions has dropped its plan to observe a transport hartal on June 23. The committee had called for a hartal of all private and public vehicles to protest against the order to withdraw 10-year-plus diesel vehicles.
The NGT order was challenged in the High Court by the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation. The KSRTC, which is already deep in red, would face a huge crisis if the NGT order were carried out. The public utility would have had to pull out around 2,000 buses from its fleet. The KSRTC, private bus operators and the ‘stage carriers’, which operate tourist and long-distance travel, would be among the worst-hit if the NGT order is implemented.
It was on May 24 that the Kochi special circuit bench of the NGT made two orders on the LEAF petition: to pull out all diesel vehicles older than 10 years off the roads of six cities within a month; and, to stop immediately the registration of diesel vehicles – other than those for use by local self-governments and for public transport – above 2000 cc. The orders had sent shock waves in the transport industry.
News : The Hindu
