Pollution body CPCB in monitoring mess

A government audit shows the Central Pollution Control Board did not install monitoring stations on time despite having the budget for two major air quality management programmes.

Updated on: Jun 10, 2015, 06:28:17 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s cities may be battling high toxicity in the air, but the national pollution watchdog doesn’t seem to be putting up enough of a fight.

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A government audit shows the Central Pollution Control Board(CPCB) did not install monitoring stations on time despite having the budget for two major air quality management programmes that could have helped the states fight rising air pollution more aggressively.

The pollution watchdog received Rs 24 crore in 2010 for the two projects: the first was to develop a web-based air quality database and a decision support system for better management of air quality in urban areas; the second was to set up 30 air quality monitoring stations across eight states and in 43 critically polluted industrial clusters in 16 states.

The audit by the office of the principal director of audit (scientific department) found the project failed to meet the deadline while average air pollution in cities has increased by about 15%, pushing 13 Indian cities into WHO’s list of most polluted in the world in 2014.

“The project to be completed by 2012-13 has still not been completed,” said the audit. The auditors also said it showed that the CPCB was not monitoring the progress of the project on a regular basis.

The audit, which was disclosed under the RTI law, also blamed the CPCB for failing to impose a penalty on another central government organisation, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), for failing to prepare the software to implement the online air quality management system for urban areas on time.

With regard to setting up monitoring stations in polluted industrial clusters, the audit said the CPCB delayed release of funds to state governments.

Government sources admitted that had the project been implemented on time, the CPCB would have been in a better position to advise state governments on air quality management. “The CPCB would have identified critically polluted areas in the upcoming cities had the project been executed,” a senior government official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
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.Read More

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