PROACTIVE APPROACH
The decision taken by the J&K Motor Vehicle Department (MVD) to link Pollution Under Control Certificate with Vahan Portal is quite important because this will serve the purpose of identifying the owners of vehicles who are non-serious about this significant aspect as pollution is causing so many problems in the life of people and containing the same is vital for creating a healthy society. In this context, the Transport Commissioner has directed the RTOs/ARTOs to immediately mobilise the resources to ensure that all the Pollution Checking Centres in their jurisdiction are made online and integrated with Vahan. Besides, the NIC has also been asked to immediately provide technical support, wherever required, so that the linking of PUC with Vahan is ensured by August 15, 2022. PUC centres have been asked to upload PUC certificates to the Vahan portal, which will let vehicle owners and traffic police access vehicle information in electronic form. It is pertinent to mention that there is a provision of heavy fine and even imprisonment if the owner of the vehicle fails to produce the PUC during the checking by the traffic cops. The facility to upload the PUC on Vahan will help in accessing the same on the portal thus eliminating the penal action against the owners of the vehicles. Already many states have established this linking process but J&K was still relying on the manual system and now by the latest directives, it is good that the PUCs of the vehicles can be accessed online by visiting the Vahan Portal making the things failsafe and convenient besides ensuring that all the vehicles will go for this certification as soon as possible to act in the direction of conserving environment, which is most necessary requirement. As there are vehicles which seldom commute at the places where there are traffic checks and therefore avoid going for certification to ensure that their vehicles are non-polluting but with this linking process, the RTOs and ARTOs would have exact idea about number of vehicles plying without valid PUCs and thus action can be taken against them for not fulfilling the responsibility towards nature and also vehicle driving norms.