300 Gramin Sewa vehicles found without permits, GPS, pollution certificates in National Capital

Over 300 Gramin Sewa (goods carriers) vehicles have been found without valid permits, non-functional GPS and pollution fitness certificates within three days of the checking drive being conducted by the Delhi government's transport department. The drive commenced on Tuesday. The vehicles have been flouting norms including route violations adding to pollution woes of the Capital.

According to officials, many of these vehicles have registered fake addresses as the department was sent back 400 of the 1700 notices issued by it to the owners earlier this month.

The department has 5,026 Gramin Sewa vehicles registered with it in the city.

The drive to crackdown the errant Gramin Sewas was prompted during a surprise check for permits, officials said.

"It was found that most of the vehicles either did not have permits or had not renewed the permits. Almost 80% were without functional GPS and valid pollution under control (PUC) certificates. On the first day of the drive, we had impounded 81 vehicles," a senior officer said.

The drive is to continue till Saturday, he said. The vehicles have also been found violating routes set by the department, which causes undue congestion on roads.

"We have set routes for these vehicles to ply. However, many were tracked plying on different routes. This has been enabled by our newly set-up operation control centre where we can track any of the commercial vehicles with live-tracking," he said.

The department has recently set up an Operations Control Centre at its headquarters, which though functional is yet to be inaugurated for real-time tracking of vehicles and receiving passenger complaints.

It is a centralised system which connects and has data from all the 12 Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) in the city.

"We have started live-tracking of all PSVs from morning till 10 pm. We will start night-tracking soon as well. At present we have got staff working in two shifts. We are recruiting more staff for the same," he said.

The move to make all public vehicles GPS-enabled has come after a number of instances of crime against women have been reported as well as to overall strengthen the crumbling transport infrastructure in Delhi.

The control room will also be able to track and record offences being made by the vehicles, as the details of all public transport vehicles (PSVs) will be linked with the system.