CPCB task force records 27 violations of Grap in February

As per these reports, open garbage dumping, waste burning, construction work, and road dust have been consistently recorded as the major sources of air pollution in Gurugram.

A Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) task force found 27 instances of air polluting activities in the city between February 1 and February 28, as part of its vigilance on the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap) to curb air pollution in Delhi-NCR.

Gurugram, India-November 05, 2018: Commuter seen wearing mask as air pollution reaches hazardous level, at Khandsa road, in Gurugram, India, on Monday, November 05, 2018. (Photo by Parveen Kumar/Hindustan Times)

This was down from 31 reported instances in January and 85 in December, 2018.

As per these reports, open garbage dumping, waste burning, construction work, and road dust have been consistently recorded as the major sources of air pollution in Gurugram.

In February, the task force reported 14 instances of construction and demolition activities, 11 instances of garbage burning, one instance of industrial waste dumping and one instance of road dust re-suspension.

Delhi, Noida, Faridabad, and Ghaziabad reported 885, 66, 34 and 36 instances of polluting activities, respectively. For the last three months, however, the CPCB has refrained from providing implementation scores, which show the effectiveness of a particular city at executing the Grap measures.

In December and January too, this score was absent. Without it, there is no official yardstick to gauge whether Gurugram has improved in its implementation of the Grap since November, when it scored just 4.7%, the lowest among all participating cities.

VK Shukla, head of the CPCB’s air quality lab in Delhi, had said at the time that this was due to an error by the IT department, which is responsible for uploading the task force’s findings on the CPCB’s website each month.

An IT department professional from CPCB, however, said, “There is no error on our part. We simply upload what we receive. If something is absent, it’s because we have not received it.” Shukla, in his response to this on Tuesday, said, “I am not sure why this has happened but I will clarify it with the respective persons and fix the issue.”

The CPCB’s task force began giving monthly implementation scores to Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad in September, 2018, after conducting field inspections in each city to gauge the extent of polluting activities, and the district administration’s response to them.

Each month, the task force submits a range of complaints on the Sameer app and then assigns an implementation score based on the ratio of the complaints submitted to the complaints resolved.

In September, Gurugram had the lowest score with 3.59, while Noida had the highest at 7.36. In October, after Grap measures were implemented Gurugram’s performance improved remarkably with a score of 17.

In November, however, the city’s performance dipped once again, falling to 4.7, while Delhi, Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad’s performance improved drastically, with all of them scoring over 25%.