NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — India’s federal government has ordered 191 polluting factories around Delhi to be sealed and told neighbouring states to put senior officials personally in charge of anti-pollution curbs, a day after the capital’s air hit its worst level of the season.
Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav gave the orders at a review meeting on Saturday, his ministry said. The Central Pollution Control Board was told to “immediately seal” 191 units that had neither installed air pollution control devices nor ordered them, despite repeated directions and show-cause notices.
Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan were told to name secretary-level officers for seven, four, and four cities respectively in the National Capital Region. The officers will make field visits and report every week to the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), which the ministry asked to issue notices to “non-performing officers”. Yadav also told the commission to start criminal prosecution of transport officials who have failed to install automatic number-plate recognition cameras to catch old and polluting vehicles.
“With winter pollution intensifying, the Union Minister directed all agencies to move beyond planning and ensure rigorous, time-bound and coordinated enforcement on the ground,” the ministry said.
Worst day of the season
Delhi’s real-time Air Quality Index touched 494 at 7.31am on Friday, on a scale that stops at 500, according to the Central Pollution Control Board. At 8am, 33 of the city’s 58 reporting monitoring stations were in the “severe” band. The city average eased to 373 by the afternoon, which is still “very poor”, and stayed in that band on Saturday, with light rain forecast to bring slight relief over the next two days.
Stage III of the Graded Response Action Plan is in force, under which the commission has asked Delhi and nearby states to consider letting offices run with half their staff. Delhi’s environment minister, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, and its transport minister, Pankaj Singh, have told half the employees in their departments to work from home.
Vehicles were the biggest source of the city’s fine particulate (PM2.5) pollution on Friday, at 31.5%, according to the government’s Decision Support System. The burning of biomass, crop stubble, dung cakes, and other household fuels made up 20.8%, while industry accounted for 1.8%.
Officials in the dock
The push to hold officials to account follows the suspension on November 4 of an executive engineer of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, after the commission found 258 violations in parts of the city, including dust on roads and heaps of construction waste. The corporation has since asked its district attorney to examine bringing a prosecution.
Yadav also said only 3,221km of the 5,480km of roads targeted for redevelopment to curb dust had been completed. In February, the commission set an emission limit of 50 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic metre for 17 categories of highly polluting industries, including food processing, textiles, and metals, and identified more than 2,000 units that had to comply.
The opposition Congress has turned the smog on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recasting the BJP’s 2024 election slogan, “Abki baar, 400 paar”, as “Abki baar, AQI 400-paar”. Across the border, Lahore has spent much of the month near the top of global pollution rankings: rain briefly cleared its air this week as Delhi overtook it, before it topped the list again.
