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The winter of 2017 in Delhi was marked by air quality dipping to alarming levels, making the city's air unbreathable. Vehicular pollution is a major contributor to air pollution and Delhi government's transport department focused on penalising polluting vehicles in the city. This fact is revealed by figures in the yearly action taken report of the department's enforcement wing.

In 2017, the number of vehicles prosecuted and challans issued were more than four times the figure achieved in 2016. While in 2016, the department had penalised 13,122 vehicles that were visibly polluting, the number of vehicles prosecuted in 2017 rose to a whopping 49,532. The department's enforcement wing doesn't have mobile pollution testing kits so only vehicles that can be seen spewing polluting fumes are fined.

Compared to 2016, the number of vehicles prosecuted for not carrying valid pollution under control (PUC) certificates also almost doubled. In 2016, 16,943 challans were issued against vehicles that didn't have a valid PUC certificate and the figure rose to 28,573 in 2017. "Our primary target in 2017 was to prosecute polluting vehicles and vehicles without PUCC. It became our focus area from July itself, when we started special drives against polluting vehicles," a transport department official said. While the department had impounded16,041 vehicles in 2016, the number rose to 24,765 in 2017.

"Instead of issuing petty challans, we focused more on impounding vehicles in 2017. This, however, also resulted in less action against vehicles on roads as impounding vehicles is a time consuming process," he said. "For example, if a vehicle is impounded in Badarpur but it has to be taken all the way to the impounding pit in Burari in north Delhi, our personnel gets tied up in this process," he said.

The focus on impounding vehicles has resulted in a dip in the total number of vehicles penalised and number of challans issued in 2017, compared to 2016.

"In 2017, we focused more on sustained special drives instead of random penalising of vehicles. The special drives, apart from polluting vehicles, were targeted at public transport buses, school buses and vans, tractor trolleys, etc," he said.

As a result, there is a substantial dip in figures of prosecution of public service vehicles such as autorickshaws, taxis, grameen sewa vehicles, etc when compared with the figures of 2016. "We have managed to achieve our target despite facing a huge manpower crunch," he said. For a city that has more than one crore vehicles, there are only 176 personnel in the enforcement wing of transport department. Apart from the department's personnel, 250 ex-servicemen have also been deployed with enforcement teams.

"For two months, March and April, 2017, our personnel were also deployed at border check points to ensure that environment compensation charge (ECC) is being properly collected. Also, with two new impounding pits — at Dwarka and Sarai Kale Khan — added this year, we had to deploy personnel there for the protection of impounded vehicles," he said.