Petrol pump owners seek to meet Delhi transport minister over PUCC rates

Petrol pump owners on Thursday wrote to Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot, seeking a meeting with him to revise PUCC rates for Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificates in the national capital.

The letter comes days after the Delhi Petrol Dealers' Association (DPDA) shut down nearly 600 PUC centres functioning at petrol pumps, saying the hike was not commensurate with operational costs.

On July 11, the Delhi government increased the PUC certificate charges for petrol, CNG and diesel vehicles after a gap of about 13 years. The hike ranges between Rs 20 and Rs 40.

"Sir, most of the PUC centres have operated the last few years in losses to avoid any inconvenience to the general public. However, due to this extreme unviability, many PUC centres have been forced to surrender their licenses in the last few months," it said.

The Managing Committee of the DPDA had thus resolved to close PUC centres across Delhi from July 15 in light of the "arbitrary and grossly insufficient hike", it said.

"... since 300 odd non-petrol pump PUC centres are not able to meet even 10 per cent of the PUC certification in Delhi, we find that the general public of Delhi has been grossly affected by this protest closure," the DPDA said.

"We would therefore request you to be so kind as to provide us time for a meeting so as to revisit and revise the rates offered for PUC certification in Delhi, so that the general public of Delhi is not inconvenienced," read the letter.

The new rates will be effective as soon as the government notifies them, Gahlot had said earlier. The DPDA said the rates were last revised in 2011 after a gap of six years and the percentage increase was more than 70.

It reiterated that the rate hike announced by the Delhi government now after 13 years is merely 35 per cent, whereas all the expenses in the operation of a PUC centre have increased multiple times, with just the wages having increased 300 per cent times from 2011 to 2024.