Despite being cautioned once by the state pollution control board, a city auto emission testing centre has again applied wrong fuel standards while conducting a check on a vehicle.
Lake Auto Service, on Southern Avenue, was in news recently when it issued a pollution-under-control certificate (PUC) to an LPG-run car after testing it on the basis of CNG emission standards. CNG, a green fuel, is not available in Calcutta.
Last Friday, the testing centre committed the same mistake by testing an LPG-run government vehicle (a white Ambassador bearing the registration number WB02C 0013) with petrol emission norms and issuing it a PUC certificate.
After Metro carried a report on May 15 about the earlier goof-up, Lake Auto Service sought to shift the blame to the software it had used for the test. But the company that supplied the software claimed that its product had both CNG and LPG options and it was up to the operator to apply the correct standard.
Soon after, the member-secretary of the state green board had written to Lake Auto Service, asking it to be ?more careful during emission testing of automobiles?.
The director in the public vehicles department had promised ?to probe the irregularities at fume testing centres? and take corrective measures.
?LPG vehicles are not being issued proper PUC certificates. It seems most of the testing centres do not have the required software,? said auto emission expert S.M. Ghosh.
Wrong marking of fuel in the PUC certificate is not the only irregularity in the fume-check process. At times, even the non-Bharat Stage II vehicles are being marked Bharat Stage II-compliant. A case in point: WNC 4172 (registered in 1987, as shown in the smart card, and hence, a non-Bharat Stage II car) was declared a Bharat Stage II vehicle by Landsdown Service Station.
?The faults seem to be a combination of software problem and inefficiency of the operators,? said Asim Banerjee, secretary of the association of auto emission testing centres.
?The high court had disposed of an auto emission case after the government submitted that the testing mechanism had been computerised. But the facts prove otherwise,? said Ghosh.
