Before taking on the transport owners in the city, Subhas Chakraborty, the lone dissenter in the CPM, had sharply objected to the anti-pollution drive launched by the state environment department and had even shot off a letter to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in July 2008 after the Pollution Control Board issued the ban notice against 15-year-old vehicles and polluting auto-rickshaws.

The letter, a copy of which is with The Indian Express, questioned the authority of the environment department and its interference in matters relating to transport vehicles

In the letter written on July 31, 2008, Chakraborty had said, “Every day, I am seeing in the newspaper that registration of vehicles would be cancelled; no vehicles more than 15 years old will be allowed to ply and such actions are being taken. From this source (newspaper), I was also informed that the steps taken by the environment department were not informed to the transport department officially.”

Earlier, Chakraborty had forced the environment department to keep its “no-pollution-under-control certificate, no fuel” policy in abeyance in April, 2008, when the former had issued a circular banning supply of fuel to those vehicles that fail to produce pollution control certificate.

Chakraborty wrote to the CM that if the environment department could take decision on such an issue, the transport department would be rendered redundant.

“It may be noted that environment department can issue order on pollution issues, not on issues related to vehicle and transport. In this situation, negative reaction against the government is an obvious result,” Chakraborty had said in the letter.

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