Noida: After technical glitches in the food and civil supplies department’s mobile application disrupted the ‘no PUCC, no fuel’ drive shortly after its Oct 1 launch, district administrations of the two NCR cities have drawn up a plan to install Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras at fuel stations — 113 in GB Nagar and 146 in Ghaziabad — and have begun collecting location details to facilitate the rollout.The high-resolution cameras will scan vehicle registration numbers and check for valid pollution under control certificates (PUCC) automatically, eliminating the need for a fuel station staffer to enter vehicle details on their phones manually.GB Nagar district supply officer Neelesh Utpal said the transport department would be responsible for installing the cameras, while petrol pump owners would be tasked with maintaining them.“We have started collecting the details of all fuel pumps across the district from Thursday, which will be sent to the transport department. The campaign was initially focused on creating awareness, but with winter approaching, we are backing it up with ANPR cameras,” GB Nagar district supply officer (DSO) Neelesh Utpal told TOI.The department will spend around Rs 2 lakh to install each unit, which will come with two cameras and a sound system, along with the capability to generate challans for violations. Each ANPR camera needs Rs 8,000 in annual maintenance.Ghaziabad DSO Amit Kumar Tiwari said they have already collated data on the 146 fuel stations, including 21 CNG pumps, and shared the list with the transport department following a meeting with representatives of petrol pump owners.“Budget for the project will be approved by the state govt, following which a tender will be floated for the company that will install the cameras,” he said.With the ‘no PUCC, no fuel’ drive launched simultaneously at Hapur, Bulandshahr, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat and Shamli, besides GB Nagar and Ghaziabad, the verification app stopped functioning soon after rollout because of server overload, disrupting certificate checks and allowing fuel sales to continue without verification. However, authorities have yet to specify a timeline for installing ANPR cameras at fuel stations in the two cities.In Delhi, which also launched a similar drive across its nearly 500 fuel stations, several pump owners had flagged implementation problems with faulty announcement systems, camera positioning problems and limited on-ground monitoring, raising questions about enforcement.
