People have appreciated the Odd-Even Formula to regulate private vehicles to reduce pollution in a survey done during the first 10 days of the scheme implemented by Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi government.
However, a bigger majority of people interviewed in the survey, conducted by LocalCircles, a citizen engagement platform, said that the scheme should be discontinued.
The scheme ends on January 15, after a 15-day trial period. The Kejriwal government has said that it would now analyse the findings of the scheme and then take a decision over the future of the scheme.
In the survey, many people said that autos and taxis took advantage of the scheme (there was no restriction on government and private buses) and charged excess fares.
The survey also found that during the first 10 days, a large majority of people contacted said that they either used public transport, which included autos and taxis, or their second car. Only eight percent of the people surveyed said that they had opted for car-pooling and nine percent used bikes.
“Based on the poll results, it can be interpreted that while citizens believe that the government surpassed their expectations on the implementation front, clear impact on reduction in pollution is yet to be determined,” said K. Yatish Rajawat, chief strategy officer of LocalCircles.
“The government of Delhi must look at how to place safeguards and controls so that autos and taxi services don’t overcharge citizens in case the rule was to be implemented again or regularised,” he said.
The platform claims it is connected with more than one million citizens across India, and to the five questions that formed a part of the survey on the first 10 days of the Odd-Even Policy, the respondents ranged between 11,785 and 13,971.
Answering the question “Should the odd-even policy be extended beyond January 15”, over half the 12,918 respondents said ‘no’ while the rest seemed okay for its extension. Those who wanted to or not to buy another car were evenly matched, and 15 percent had vehicles with both registrations.
