4 months ago
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Former Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik opposed linking of Pollution Under Control (PUC) Certificate with merchantability of substance successful Odisha asking the State authorities to refrain from penalising radical during modulation period.
Terming the Mohan Majhi government’s handling of the PUC certificate enforcement arsenic gross mismanagement, Mr. Patnaik said the faulty argumentation caused immense hardships, and inconvenience to the communal radical of Odisha.
“What started arsenic a abrupt announcement of the ‘No PUC, No Fuel’ regularisation from January 1, 2026, rapidly descended into chaos with monolithic queues astatine investigating centres crossed the State. The BJP authorities failed to hole adequately, with nary enlargement of investigating infrastructure, nary beforehand planning, and nary consciousness campaigns connected the required scale,” the erstwhile CM connected ‘X’.
“Faced with nationalist outrage, the authorities was forced into aggregate U-turns: archetypal deferring enforcement to February 1, past to March 31, and astir precocious announcing a broad relaxation with nary fines until April 1, 2026, including suspension of e-detection astatine toll gates. These repeated reversals exposure the utter incompetence and deficiency of foresight successful the transport department,” helium maintained.
Mr. Patnaik said the radical of Odisha merit amended governance, policies that are implemented without causing unnecessary suffering.
“While controlling vehicular contamination is important, it cannot travel astatine the outgo of harassing citizens,” helium said.
The BJD supremo demanded contiguous standard up the PUC investigating facilities, simplifying the process, and ensuring nary undue penalties are imposed connected radical during this modulation period. It is to beryllium noted that BJD had staged monolithic protests against linking of PUC with merchantability of fuel.
