As Gurgaon observed 14th car free day today, the city's police faced several odds, including the lack of equipments to monitor pollution level, in making the drive a success.
With each car free day, the Gurgaon Police have been boosting of reducing the air pollution by up to 15 to 18 per cent. But it lacked authenticity considering the fact that district administration has no movable portable device to calculate air pollution.
Gurgaon Police totally dependent on Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) for calculating air pollution at only chosen stretches.
But the HSPCB have just one device installed at VikasSadan in Civil Line area having limited reach of 2 to 3 km but the chosen car free stretches are situated beyond its sensing radius.
Spokesperson of Gurgoan Police Hawa Singh says that the calculation of air pollution is based on assumption of corporate houses.
"It is true that HSPCB has only one device and hence we have asked the corporate houses associated with this initiative to update us about how many less cars used on car free day.
"Our calculation on air pollution is based on assumption of less number of cars used on the day," Hawa Singh said.
Moreover, lack of coordination between other departments is also hampering the initiative.
Currently, civil administration and civic agencies of Gurgaon are not participating in the initiative. On the 14th car free day today, there were few traffic officials even as NGO workers participated in awareness campaign for auto drivers.
However, majority of environmentalists are appreciating the initiative of Gurgaon Police and say that they have at least thought about saving the environment.
"The car free day initiative of Gurgaon Police has been endorsed by many other cities including national capital Delhi.
"Even Delhi government initiative of odd-even formula is appreciable," said Charanjeet Singh, a local environmentalist.
Today on the 14th car free day, a training programme for auto drivers was organised at the traffic tower by the traffic police for improvement and step ahead for safety in autos.
"The main objective of which was to educate the auto drivers about safe driving, road safety rules and customer behavior to the auto drivers," Hawa Singh said.
During the Car Free Day today, Gurgaon traffic police issued thousands of challans against violators traffic rules violators.
A total of 1,920 challans were issued.
