Air quality monitors fail soon after services restored ahead of festive season

Notably, the contracts had expired in batches and the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) officials were relying on legacy data to monitor the pollution levels since March.

Haryana’s air quality monitoring stations lying defunct for the past six months were finally restored to service on Monday, however, officials said in many cities like Gurugram, Faridabad, Karnal, Ambala and Charkhi Dadri, 12 to 15 of the 29 continuous ambient air quality monitoring systems (CAAQMS) kept on troubleshooting due to a technical glitch on Tuesday.

Air quality monitors fail soon after services restored ahead of festive season

The advanced-sensor systems, which feed into the Air Quality Index (AQI), were shut statewide in January 2025 following a failure to renew the contract with private firms who were adamant on demanding exorbitant prices for their maintenance, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Notably, the contracts had expired in batches and the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) officials were relying on legacy data to monitor the pollution levels since March.

A senior official of HSPCB’s regional office in Gurugram, requesting anonymity, confirmed that at least two out of four CAAQMS stopped recording data after they were made operational on Monday. “Due to some technical issues, the air quality monitoring systems again failed to respond properly. We are working to resolve the problem on an urgent basis,” said the official.

The official informed that the stations in Teri Gram and Vikas Sadan became non-functional, with their display showing no readings, immediately after they were set up following months of complete shutdown.

Similarly, one station (Sector 16a) in Faridabad, and one each in most pollution-affected cities like Charkhi Dadri, Ambala, Karnal, were recorded as inactive on HSCPB’s live air monitoring feed on its website on Tuesday.

Akansha Tanwar, environment engineer at HSPCB regional office in Gurugram, acknowledged that the CAAQMS data transmission has been disrupted, owing to a technical glitch. “Within two days, the systems will become fully operational,” she said.

A senior official at the Faridabad office blamed the local HSPCB laboratory for it. “These are highly sensitive machines and one or two can become faulty, here and there,” he said.

Dr Anumita Roychowdhury, director of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said that it would be difficult to construct a long-term air quality monitoring trend due to the existing gaps in recording the data in the National Capital Region (NCR).

“For air quality monitoring to become performance-linked, we need robust reporting and auditing systems. Without a stringent monitoring framework, it will be difficult to assess population exposure to air pollution and take further policy action,” Roychowdhury said.