Even as the city chokes with exhaust gases from vehicles, the Maharashtra government's measures to tackle the problem appear to the grossly inadequate. Observers note that efforts to check the level of vehicular emissions through Pollution Under Control (PUC) checks and control of fuel quality have proved largely futile. Regional Transport Office (TRO) officials and the traffic police say that they have intensified PUC checks. But in private, they concur with environmentalists who say that such exercises have been "an utter failure"