The Pollution Control Board’s statistics record Charbagh’s Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) at 2.3 times the prescribed level. The area’s Respirable Suspended Particulate Matter (RSPM) is 1.75 times higher than ‘normal’. Little wonder, most people passing through the area regularly complain of severe nausea and headache. “The problem gets more acute when it is crowded,” says Avdesh Sharma, a regular commuter, “but tere is little point in complaining because I am, by now, used to it.”

Though some respite from the fume came with the introduction of battery-operated and CNG tempos, their numerical insignificance meant they hardly suffice for this area with an extremely high traffic volume. Here’s how that ‘heavy’ traffic is broken down, courtesy records from the Regional Transport Office (RTO): a good 80 per cent of total traffic comprises two- and three-wheelers, followed by four-wheelers (10 per cent or so), with other vehicles making up the rest.

And that’s where the problem gains momentum, say officials, for most two- and three-wheelers still run on two-stroke engines, which emit more fume (read pollution) than four-stroke engines of cars and newer models of two-wheelers.

Gangaphal, Regional Transport Officer, Lucknow, says autorickshaws are most efficient and emit least polluting fumes when running at 40-45 km per hour, but they can barely manage 10-15 km an hour in the choked artteries in and around the station. And “the problem takes further wings since they constantly run in a stop/start mode.”

So what is the government doing to clear the fog and fume? Mulling over a scheme to introduce vehicles run on the ‘green fuel’: Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). “We have stopped issuing permits for diesel vehicles and have taken steps to introduce CNG,” says Sanghamitra Shankar, Additional Transport Commissioner.

But isn’t that news a wee old? After all, some CNG vehicles were introduced on city roads way back in April. “It is an ongoing process,” is all a cautious Shankar is willing to say when asked how long it will take to metamorphose the whole lot — a la Delhi.

But that move has had the Sumo owners fuming. They claim their diesel-run cars are not as big villains, vis-a-vis pollution, as they are made out to be. “The government’s move to introduce CNG will ruin us, — each CNG kit costs Rs 80,000. How can we afford that?” asks R H Rawat. “I will soon go bankrupt...and you are worried about pollution?”

But Birendra Kumar, who drove a Sumo earlier, takes a measured approach: “It will definitely cut the pollution here once they introduce CNG vehicles here.”

No debates. Only, the question is when will they fuel the clean dream?