Delhi govt urges neighbours to switch to CNG for public vehicles, ban crackers

Gopal Rai also stressed on the need to promote the use of bio-decomposers by farmers to tackle crop stubble, and prevent them from burning it.

Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai on Thursday suggested that the neighbouring states should consider implementing a complete ban on firecrackers, and shift all public vehicles to CNG for a robust anti-pollution plan for the national capital region.  

Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai said neighbouring states should switch to CNG for their public vehicles and implement complete ban on crackers to control pollution in Delhi and the entire region. (PTI)

Rai also stressed on the need to promote the use of bio-decomposers by farmers to tackle crop stubble, and prevent them from burning it.

After participating in a meeting convened by the Union environment ministry on Thursday, Rai told reporters that Delhi’s air pollution crisis cannot be resolved in isolation, and it will need cooperation from all neighbouring states.

Environment ministers of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan and chief secretary of Punjab attended the meeting, which, the union environment minister Bhupender Yadav said focussed on the ways to prevent farm fires.

Delhi has been at the centre of India’s air pollution crisis for years now, which particularly worsens every winter season. The landlocked demography of the national capital also puts it at a disadvantage, as winds carrying pollutants from neighbouring states also impacts its air. Experts have time and again pointed out that sharing a common air shed with the Indo-Gangetic Plains, the issue of Delhi’s pollution cannot be tackled in isolation, and the governments will have to come up with a holistic plan to bring down emissions in the entire region.

The stubble fires in the neighbouring agrarian states of Punjab and Haryana are a case in point. Every year, when farmers burn stubble after harvest, the smoke carries dangerous particles measuring less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) to Delhi. Last year, according to Safar -- an agency under the Union ministry of earth sciences, the contribution of farm fires to concentration of PM2.5 (particulate matter with diameter less than 2.5 micrometres) in Delhi’s air reached up to 40% in November.

Every winter, Delhi’s air quality nosedives with pollution levels reaching emergency levels on several days. The deterioration starts around mid-October with the fumes of stubble burning in the fields of Haryana and Punjab and gets worse with cracker bursting during Diwali and Delhi’s own local pollution sources. The unfavourable weather conditions including a change in wind direction and slow wind speed also add to the Capital’s problem.

Rai on Thursday said that Delhi’s pollution can be attributed more to external factors than its own sources. He said that on September 18, the reading of PM10 (particulate matter with diameter less than 10 micrometres) pollutants was 67ug/m3 and that of PM2.5 was 27ug/m3. On September 19, it was 85ug/m3 and 35ug/m3 respectively, on September 20, it was 78ug/m3 and 31ug/m3 respectively, on September 21, it was 81ug/m3 and 31ug/m3 respectively and on September 22, it was 64ug/m3 and 27ug/m3 respectively.

“Last year, I saw from the war room that the PM10 and PM2.5 graph was increasing. We specially monitored how Punjab and Haryana were contributing to the pollution of Delhi through stubble burning. As the quantum of stubble burning increased in these states, the air quality worsened in Delhi. In today’s meeting, we appealed to the central government and the government of the neighbouring states to eradicate the stubble burning practices as soon as possible,” Rai said.

He added that no extension should be given to thermal power plants in NCR that are operating without emission control devices.“These plants are to be retrofitted with new technology to control emissions but they operate without it after paying a penalty. The gases they emit are the most harmful,” Rai said.