By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, September 24, 2019: The Odisha government on Monday banned manual certificates by vehicle pollution testing units (PTUs) from October 1. Vehicle owners, henceforth has to obtain the emission test certificate generated online via the transport department’s Vahan database, official said.

Manual certificates issued by PTUs after September 30, 2019, will be treated as invalid. The PTUs must comply with the guidelines to facilitate electronic uploading of emissions test data in the Vahan database. Vehicle owners should not accept manual certificates, an officer said.

Authorized PTUs have strictly been asked to link their centres with the Vahan database and generate online Pollution Under Control Certificate (PUC) certificates of vehicles after emission test as per the guidelines of the ministry of road transport and highways.

However, the implementation was relaxed till October 1, 2019, due to inadequate PTUs and lack of infrastructure of the existing pollution checking centres in the state.

At present, 163 authorised PTUs are functioning across Odisha out of which 106 units are linked to Vahan application to issue online PUC certificates. The remaining 57 PTUs have been asked to let their centres be linked to Vahan as soon as possible, failing which their transport licence may be cancelled. The transport department has given licence to 14 new PTUs in the state since September 1. “We have uploaded the complete list of valid PTUs linked to Vahan on our website (www.odishatransport.gov.in and www.orissatransport.nic.in),” the officer said.

At least 69,210 online PUC certificates have been issued in the state since the introduction of the amended Motor Vehicles (MV) Act from September 1 till now. Under the new MV Act, motorists found without PUC certificates will be fined Rs 10,000.

The transport department said the Vahan-generated online PUC certificates will prevent possible manipulation. “We received complaints that people managed to procure PUC certificates from some units without subjecting their vehicles to emission test. However, such manipulation cannot happen with Vahan-linked PTUs. The pollution checking equipment of PTUs is connected to a computer linked to Vahan. The moment a vehicle physically undergoes pollution test at the authorized PTUs, the data is fed in our system,” the officer said.

In a tweet, the transport department said, “The vehicle owners will continue to get relief from crackdown up to December 1 as announced by CM Naveen Patnaik”.