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Surat, Jabalpur, Agra get clean air awards

By, New Delhi
Sep 08, 2024 06:38 AM IST

Surat, Jabalpur and Agra, cities with populations of over 1 million, have topped the Swachh Vayu Survekshan (clean air survey) Awards for clean air.

Surat, Jabalpur and Agra, cities with populations of over 1 million, have topped the Swachh Vayu Survekshan (clean air survey) Awards for clean air, the government announced on Saturday.

Surat, Jabalpur, Agra get clean air awards
Surat, Jabalpur, Agra get clean air awards

Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav and Rajasthan chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma presented the awards to the best-performing cities where the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) is being implemented.

In the category for populations between 300,000 and 1 million, Firozabad, Amravati and Jhansi were recognised as the top three and for cities with fewer than 300,000 people, the toppers were Raebareli, Nalgonda and Nalagarh.

Municipal commissioners of winning cities were awarded cash prizes, trophies and certificates.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) reported that 51 cities have shown a reduction in PM10 levels by more than 20% compared to the base year 2017-18, with 21 of these cities achieving a reduction of over 40%.

According to the NCAP assessment document, sectors given weightage include biomass and municipal solid waste burning, road dust, dust from construction and demolition waste, vehicular emissions and industrial emissions, among others.

Experts have previously noted that NCAP does not focus on combustion sources and may not be effectively curbing toxic emissions.

A Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) assessment released in July found that road dust mitigation has been the primary focus of NCAP, which was launched in 2019 as the first effort to set clean air targets for 131 polluted cities and reduce particulate pollution nationally.

The assessment revealed that 64% of the total funds ( 10,566 crore) has been allocated to road paving, widening, pothole repair, water sprinkling and mechanical sweepers. Only 14.51% of funding has been used for controlling biomass burning, 12.63% for reducing vehicular pollution and a mere 0.61% for controlling industrial pollution.

“The primary focus of the funding is thus road dust mitigation,” the assessment stated.

NCAP aims to reduce particulate pollution by up to 40% by 2025-26 from the base year of 2019-20. It is India’s first performance-linked funding programme to improve air quality.

Originally, NCAP was planned to tackle both PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations in the 131 non-attainment cities. In practice, only PM10 concentration has been considered for performance assessment. PM2.5, the more harmful fraction largely emitted from combustion sources, has been neglected, according to CSE findings

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