The state environment department — responsible for ensuring clean air for citizens — has formally shot down a proposal to improve Calcutta’s ambient air quality.

A day after the transport department announced its decision to put on hold the ‘no pollution-under-control (PUC) certificate, no fuel’ proposal, the environment department issued an order indefinitely deferring the implementation of the proposal.

In a notification issued on March 4, 2008, the environment department had announced its plan to give effect to the order from June 5, which is also World Environment Day.

“The operation of the order issued by the department of environment is hereby kept in abeyance until further order,” said Thursday’s notification.

The ‘No PUC, no fuel’ policy was first recommended by a high court-appointed expert committee in 2000 but the government had been buying time over its implementation.

Sailen Sarkar, the environment minister, passed the buck on to the transport department.

“The transport department has expressed its inability in implementing the order and so we are putting it on hold for now,” Sarkar told Metro. The matter will be reviewed some time next month.

Sources in the environment department told Metro that though the transport department had earlier agreed to the proposal, minister Subhas Chakraborty changed his mind after some members of the West Bengal Petroleum Dealers’ Association met him on Wednesday and requested him to review the matter.

“We cannot suddenly start such a system without studying the technical issues,” Chakraborty explained his department’s decision.

But he continued with his lip service to make Calcutta’s roads safe and air cleaner. For starters, he has declared June 5 ‘No Honking Day’.

“We have also instructed the department concerned not to issue certificates of fitness to buses with poor structural design,” said Chakraborty.