How long-term plan looks to clear haze around Del’s efforts to fight air pollution

New Delhi: Delhi’s long-term action plan against air pollution is likely to be ready by next week and will comprise short-term and long-term anti-pollution measures. The plan has been formulated after including the recommendations of experts at a two-day roundtable organised by the state government in April, the measures under the central government’s Comprehensive Action Plan of 2018 and the past suggestions of National Green Tribunal.

A DPCC official confirmed the action plan was almost complete and said the role of various civic agencies will be clearly defined. “To develop the plan, suggestions from experts and stakeholders were gathered from the two-day roundtable conference held in April. The Comprehensive Action Plan and the NGT judgment in the Vardhaman Kaushik vs Union of India have also been looked at,” said the official.

According to Delhi Pollution Control Committee, the major short-term measures in Delhi’s greening action plan are managing the dust and turning crop stubble into manure using a bio-decomposer solution developed by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa. “The plan has three components dealing with stubble burning, dust pollution and greening to mitigate pollution and dust,” said a government official who is working on the action plan. These steps will be implemented this winter.

The action this winter, government officials said, will also focus on collecting data from the anti-smog tower at Connaught Place. Real-time pollution source apportionment will be determined with a study being carried out by IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi and The Energy Research Institute. The official added that data from the real-time source apportionment study will be used to act against the biggest sources of pollution at any particular time. “While long-term measures will continue and aim to reduce pollution over several years, immediate action can be taken based on this real-time data,” said the official.

Complaints about pollution can be submitted on the Green Delhi mobile app, which will also be employed to coordinate action among the various agencies and to ensure the complaint pendency rate remains low.

In March, environment minister Gopal Rai had announced that the state government was working on a long-term action plan to curb air pollution and mentioned the April 12-13 roundtable in this regard.