As per new data of Indian cities presented to Parliament by the Central Pollution Control Board and National Environment Engineering Research Institute, Ludhiana recorded highest level of air pollution among cities in 2009, overtaking the previous year's topper Delhi. Chetan Chauhan
Air pollution levels in most Indian cities are rising at an alarming rate due to increase in vehicular congestion.
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As per new data of Indian cities presented to Parliament by the Central Pollution Control Board and National Environment Engineering Research Institute, Ludhiana recorded highest level of air pollution among cities in 2009, overtaking the previous year's topper Delhi.
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"Ludhiana has got the top ranking because there air pollution there has risen at a faster rate than in Delhi," said a senior environment ministry official.
The average particulate matter (PM 10) recorded for Ludhiana was 254 ug/m3 as compared to 243 ug/m3 for Delhi.
Among major cities, Kolkata is ranked sixth on the list, Bangalore 11th and Mumbai 12th.
Anumita Roy Choudhury, Associate Director with Centre for Science and Environment said : "The problem with Indian cities has been a sudden increase in number of vehicles without adequate increase in road space."
As per the road transport ministry data, road space in India has increased at an annual rate of 2.5 % as compared to over 10 % increase in vehicular population.
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The worrying factor has been trend faster rate of increase in air pollution in smaller towns.
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The worrying factor has been trend faster rate of increase in air pollution in smaller towns.
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"These smaller cities have witnessed huge increase in personal vehicles since 2005 leading to greater congestion," Choudhury said.
Among the 12 most polluted cities in India, at least seven are smaller towns such as Kanpur, Amritsar and Jamshedpur.
Another set of data released by the ministry shows that even nitrogen oxide emissions are on the rise. The probable cause is higher sale of diesel vehicles.
Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh, in his reply, said that the government has taken several measures to check air pollution but told HT that failure of many cities to provide an alternate and viable public transport system has also caused a huge jump in the numbers of on road vehicles.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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