Delhi Air Quality To Deteriorate By Thursday; After MPs Skipped Meeting, Talks In Parliament Today
The national capital is not in for a respite from poor air quality, which is set to deteriorate further in Thursday, as winds are set to slow down. On Monday, Delhi recorded its best air quality in 12 days as moderate winds continued to counter the effect of stubble burning.
The improvement in weather is short-lived and pollution levels are expected to enter ¡®severe¡¯ category by Thursday due to a gradual dip in wind speed over the next two-three days and unabated stubble burning in neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana.
Discussion in Parliament
Congress leader Manish Tewari and Biju Janata Dal's (BJD) Pinaki Misra will be initiating a discussion on pollution in the Lok Sabha on the second day of the Winter Session on Tuesday.
Lok Sabha is likely to hold a short-duration discussion from 2 pm today.
No improvement in sight
The overall Air Quality Index (AQI) in Delhi in the early hours of Tuesday stood at 218 as compared to Monday's 211 around the same time.
Jahangirpuri was the most polluted area with an AQI of 311 and Ayanagar (98) the least polluted, according to the Central Pollution Control Board data.
Neighbouring Ghaziabad (256), Greater Noida (218), Noida (227) recorded their air quality in the 'poor' category, while Gurgaon's AQI (138) remained in the 'moderate' category for the second consecutive day.
The Ministry of Earth Sciences' air quality monitor SAFAR said the AQI is predicted to deteriorate to the lower end of the 'very poor' category by Tuesday.
The probability of the AQI touching the lower end of the 'severe' category on November 21 is high, it said.
"Another factor is the change in transport-level wind direction to northwest (coming from Punjab and Haryana) and an increase in the effective fire count to 610.
AFP
"As transport-level winds are predicted to slow down to moderate level, favouring (farm fire plume) intrusion in Delhi, the share of stubble burning is estimated to increase to 13 percent in Delhi's PM2.5 pollution on Tuesday," it said.
On Monday, the Supreme Court directed anti-pollution authority, EPCA, asked Delhi and NCR states to strengthen surveillance and enforcement to check local sources of pollution and crop burning in view of the predicted dip in air quality.
On November 4, the apex court banned construction and demolition activities in the region in the wake of surging pollution levels in the aftermath of Diwali and stubble burning cases.
By November 11, the number of stubble burning incidents had already crossed the 48,000 mark. On an average, 2,000 incidents of stubble burning are being reported on a daily basis from the neighbouring state leading to a rise in smoke in the national capital.
In 2018, only 40,774 cases were reported till November 10.
