Delhi Air Pollution: NGT Issues Notice To Top Cop, Traffic Police Commissioner

New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has issued notices to the Delhi Police chief and special commissioner of traffic management seeking their response on the steps taken to reduce air pollution from vehicles and parking problems.

The tribunal, looking into the poor air quality in Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region), said that a clear process should be followed to apply different stages of the anti-pollution Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).

“Now that winter has started, we find that the Air Quality Index (AQI) on October 23 in Delhi was 364 in the very poor category, which reflects that there is a lapse on the part of the authorities in preventing the dip in the air quality in NCR,” NGT chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava said in an order on October 24.

The bench, also comprising judicial member Justice Arun Kumar Tyagi and expert member A Senthil Vel, referred to a report from Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) which said that the GRAP schedule was “comprehensively reviewed” and Stage I was activated when the average AQI in the national capital remained above 200 for a “sufficiently long duration.”

The tribunal expressed its dissatisfaction over stage I activation of GRAP.

“It is not disclosed as to the average number of days taken to invoke Stage I, nor is it specified what duration is considered to be sufficiently long. We believe that objective criteria must be applied, and a transparent process should be adopted for invoking the different stages of GRAP,” the tribunal added.

Observing that vehicular pollution was a major contributor to air pollution, NGT observed that the responsibility for controlling traffic, addressing parking issues and enforcing ban on unauthorised and old vehicles lies with police.

The police commissioner and special commissioner of traffic management were added as parties or respondents.

“Let notices be issued to the newly added respondents to file their responses by way of affidavit, disclosing the steps taken at the ground level to mitigate the contributing air pollution factors related to vehicular movements and parking,” the tribunal directed.

The matter will next be taken up on November 5.