The Centre of Indian Trade Union (CITU), labour wing of the CPM, on Wednesday criticised the government’s stand on polluting vehicles saying that the back-up infrastructure and logistics were still too inadequate to carry out the ban.

Kali Ghosh, CITU general secretary of West Bengal, said in spite of the government’s dictate on public transport, the ground reality is that it would be very difficult to uphold the High Court’s decision.

“Where is the back-up infrastructure that the government can rely on to impose the ban? There are hardly any gas filling centres and even less number of new four-stroke autos have been produced. There are many such practical difficulties that have to be looked into before the ban can be imposed,” Ghosh said. “It would be impossible to stop all the cars on the roads. The government has to arrange for alternatives and so far nothing has been done,” he added.

He, however, made it clear that protests and bandhs were not what they were looking at; rather they were keen to sort it out through dialogues with the transport department.

“If the government confiscates all the vehicles from July 25 then where do they plan to keep them? Even Howrah Maidan is small for it. If we have been able to live with polluting vehicles for so many years, we can live for another few months by which time the logistics should be sorted out,” he said.