Kejriwal govt’s odd-even rule cleaning up Delhi’s air: Pollution body

The Delhi Pollution Control Committee said initial trends showed odd even will have a positive impact on the Capital’s air quality.

The odd-even vehicle restriction scheme could be helping clean up Delhi’s air, the city’s pollution control authority has said, although its findings are at variance with those of other air monitoring agencies.

The Delhi Pollution Control Committee on Monday said initial trends showed odd even will have a positive impact on the Capital’s air quality. (Parveen Kumar/HT Photo)

The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) said PM 2.5 levels were within the permissible limit of 60 micrograms per cubic metre of air (µg/m3) at 42 of 74 locations in the city on April 16. This, it said, was an improvement over the days preceding the scheme – which requires odd and even-numbered vehicles to ply on alternate days of the week.

According to DPCC mobile vans stationed at various spots across Delhi that day, nearly 69 locations across the city registered PM 2.5 levels below 100 µg/m3 while 45 locations showed PM 10 levels below 200 µg/m3. A concrete assessment will be made after studying the impact for a few more days, officials said.

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These findings, however, were at odds with TERI’s claims that many places across the city witnessed an over-threefold increase in PM 2.5 levels on April 16 as compared to April 12 (before the scheme was implemented). Data from the research institute stated that while PM 2.5 levels at Anand Vihar stood at 168 µg/m3 on that day (as compared to 55 on April 12), it was 151 µg/m3 at Punjabi Bagh (an almost four-fold jump from 41 on the earlier date).

The Ministry of Earth Sciences’ System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) , on the other hand, supported the DPCC’s claims – stating that air pollution levels had undergone a steady decrease between Friday and Sunday. This was evident from the slump in PM 2.5, PM 10 and ozone levels recorded across the city over this period, it said.

Ozone levels in the atmosphere on Sunday, however, were the lowest since the beginning of the month.

Read | Odd-even gets a thumbs down from school going kids parents

The Delhi government took the road rationing measure for the first time in January as pollution levels touched alarming levels.

According to SAFAR, the average PM 2.5 concentration in Delhi on Tuesday is expected to be 80 µg/m3, 20 points more than the standard level. The average PM 2.5 concentration was 78 µg/m3 on Monday.

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