NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — Police in India’s capital stopped a march against the city’s toxic air on Wednesday evening, a few hundred metres after it set off from Turkman Gate in Old Delhi towards Jantar Mantar, as haze from Diwali fireworks still hung over the city.
Dozens of students and young people joined the march, called by the Revolutionary Workers’ Party of India, the Disha Students’ Organisation, Naujawan Bharat Sabha, Scientists for Society, and Stree Mukti League. After about 300 to 400 metres, Delhi Police and Central Reserve Police Force personnel surrounded the marchers on two sides and barricaded the road. The protesters held their demonstration where they had been stopped, and no one was detained.
The groups are demanding stricter enforcement of pollution rules. They accuse the authorities of letting industries keep polluting while failing to enforce curbs on construction dust and vehicles under the Graded Response Action Plan, Delhi’s emergency anti-pollution plan. “Clean air is not a privilege of the rich,” said Chiranshu, a member of the Disha Students’ Organisation.
Vishal, a member of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party, said political leaders “sit in their offices and homes with air purifiers” while pregnant women, the elderly, and children bear the brunt of the smog.
Police at a children’s library
Earlier in the day, police went to the party’s office in Karawal Nagar, in northeast Delhi, which also houses a children’s library. The party said three of its members and a Class 9 student were inside, and that officers told them they could not leave. Prateek Kumar, a lawyer for the group, said police first tried to arrest Yogesh Swami, the member who runs the library, without showing any legal grounds, and left only after lawyers intervened.
Rahool Alwal, the deputy commissioner of police for North East Delhi, said officers had only wanted to tell Swami that the march was planned for a site where protests are not allowed. “There is a designated place and time for protests, and they can hold the protest there,” he said.
Supporters of the same groups were stopped on Minto Road on November 1 as they marched from Ramlila Maidan towards Jantar Mantar. At least 22 were detained and released at about 2am, and police later filed a complaint against them for disobeying orders, assaulting public servants, obstruction, and criminal conspiracy.
Air still ‘very poor’
Delhi’s air quality index stood at 321 at 7am on Thursday, in the “very poor” band, according to the Central Pollution Control Board. A monitoring station at IIT Delhi read 414, in the “severe” range, and 39 of the city’s 57 stations reported very poor air.
The city’s average reading reached 376 on Diwali, its worst for the festival since 2021. The Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi research group, said fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, averaged 236 micrograms per cubic metre in the week before Diwali, nearly double the figure for the same week last year. The World Health Organization’s 24-hour guideline is 15.
The smog has crossed the border too. Punjab’s environment authorities said this week that polluted air from India reached half of Punjab after Diwali, while Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, defended the festival’s firecrackers and said the pollution would subside.
