Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh on Thursday said 34,000 Indian citizens die due to causes associated with unchecked air pollution every year.
Quoting a study published in global medical journal ‘The Lancet Planetary Health” in his statement, the Congress leader said this shows how bad this crisis is.
“7.2 percent of all deaths in India are associated with air pollution. About 34,000 deaths each year in just 10 cities and Delhi is the worst affected, with 12,000 deaths each year. However, even cities with lover pollution such as Pune, Chennai, and Hyderabad witness thousands of deaths,” said Jairam Ramesh.
He said that this public health crisis is a direct result of the failures of the “non-biological PM’s governments,” which has prioritised the profits of the “PM’s friends” over the health of India's people.
“Since 2017, the Modi government has continuously pushed back the deadline for coal power plants to install pollution-controlling Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) equipment. It has led to thousands of deaths, all for the profit of plant owners,” alleged the Congress leader.
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{{/usCountry}}Skyrocketing prices of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders have meant that indoor air pollution has worsened, as families are forced to cook on chulhas instead of cooking gas, he added.
“The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019 with typical fanfare, has turned out to be a complete failure. More than 50 percent of CAP funds were not utilised by the end of 2023. Further, as the recent Lancet study points out, the clean-air targets set by the NCAP are much too low to save lives,” Ramesh adds.
He said that out of 131 cities under NCAP, most do not even have data to track their air pollution and of 46 cities which have data, only 8 cities have met the NCAP's low target, while 22 cities actually saw air pollution get worse.
Taking a swipe at the Centre, he said government has launched an all-out war on India’s environmental protection norms and the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Act of 2023 stripped protections for much of India’s forests, the Biological Diversity Act and Environmental Protection Acts have been diluted, the Forest Rights Act of 2006 has been weakened, and Environmental Impact Assessment norms have been bypassed.