From CK Nayak
NEW DELHI, Jan 12: Byrnihat was the most polluted urban centre in the country in 2023, surpassing even the national capital New Delhi with very poor air quality.
New Delhi, known for its persistently high air pollution levels during winter, ranked as the eighth most polluted city, a report by the independent think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said. Byrnihat is closely followed by Begusarai in Bihar and Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh, according to the report.
In October 2023, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) marked Byrnihat, an industrial town bordering Assam, as the most polluted urban centre. The CPCB had earlier developed its Graded Response Action Plan measures to deal with air pollution.
The AQI (Air Quality Index) is a tool for communication of air quality status to people. There are six AQI categories – good, satisfactory, moderately polluted, poor, very poor, and severe.
Each of these categories is decided based on the ambient concentration values of air pollutants and their likely health impacts (known as health breakpoints).
The Meghalaya government had instructed the Chief Secretary, D.P. Wahlang to take up the issue of monitoring the air pollution at Byrnihat with his Assam counterpart. There are several factories on the Assam side in Byrnihat while Meghalaya has a designated industrial estate.
The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) initiated in 2019 aims for a 20-30% reduction in PM2.5 and PM10 concentration by 2024 in 131 cities that had not met prescribed air quality standards from 2011 to 2015. Sunil Dahia, South Asia’s analyst at CREA, said 227 cities with air quality data available for over 75% of the days in 2023 were studied.
The government has now set a new target of achieving a 40% reduction in particulate matter concentration in these cities by 2026.
“After five years of the NCAP implementation, only 44 cities out of the 131 non-attainment cities have concluded the source apportionment studies,” Dahia said.
“Due to the absence of these studies, 64% of the funds allocated under NCAP has been utilised solely for dust mitigation and ineffective solutions like smog guns, resulting in inefficient use of public funds,” he added.
The CREA report on Wednesday revealed that only 37 NCAP-covered cities achieved PM10 levels below the annual targets set by the programme. Last year, 118 cities not yet part of NCAP breached the national air ambient quality standards for PM10.