kolkata killer fumes thick black smoke clouds of them a gasping city and all along the deadline was ticking april 2 2004 to change over to a cleaner city where children can breathe but for eight months after calcutta high court in april this year set the deadline to switch over to the bharat stage ii emission norm no one seemed to be doing anything but a day after the high court ruled out any extension of the deadline things appear to be moving fast for starters the state transport department has promised to get down to business and quickly we were hoping for an extension since meeting the stringent norms would be difficult considering the condition of most buses and minibuses a senior official said transport minister subhas chakraborty away in chennai said the order would have to be followed but that would require real fast work in the kolkata metropolitan area there are 15 lakh vehicles and of them only two lakh meet the bharatii norm so what happens to the remaining 13 lakh they have a choice either change engines or instal catalytic converters or switch to lpg cng the other option in places like delhi wont be available here theres hope for those who want to use lpgwork has started on at least 10 new gas stations where you can load lpg cylinders but before you can do that you will have to fit car with an lpg conversion kit the state public vehicles department has approved of the special kits that comply with bharatii norms we have received an order from the automotive research association of india permitting us to grant licence to some firms which will manufacture the lpg kit we have given the green light to four such firms all of them foreign concerns including gascon and lavado we should have the kits with us soon hopefully by early 2004 pvd assistant director purnendu dutta told tnn indian oil general manager pk basu sounded upbeat the court order is hopefully going to streamline the system lpg conversion is bound to take place soon till now we have just one station which had no takers the judgment has come as a boon to uswork is already on to set up at least 10 new lpg gas stations of which ioc is building five he said there are several companies making catalytic converters that they claim are bharatii compliant but the big question is which of them is reliable thats one problem the other is the number of lpg outlets 10 is just not good enough only relatively new vehicles and perhaps a number of private cars will be able to convert i dont think any of the thousands of private buses and minibuses are in any state of preparedness a source in the pvd said then theres the problem of two and threewheelers the twostroke auorickshaws can neither be converted to lpg nor be fitted with any device to make it