As Delhi AQI falls to 'severe plus', L-G tells vulnerable people to stay home

New Delhi, November 3

A toxic smog blanket covered the national Capital on Friday as the air quality index hovered in the “severe plus” category and Swiss real time pollution monitor IQAir listed Delhi as the world’s most polluted city, followed by Pakistan’s Lahore.

• Editorial: Blanket of haze

Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena took stock of the “extremely worrying” situation and urged people to avoid unnecessary travel. The meeting, attended by Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai, appealed to Punjab and other Delhi neighbours to curb crop residue burning as the 24-hour average AQI in the Capital deteriorated to 468 as against 392 yesterday. At 12 noon, the average AQI of Delhi was 475. This improved to 456 at 5 pm.

The Centre’s air quality panel, Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), also reviewed the situation, with a sub-committee noting that since Stage-III Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) was introduced yesterday late evening, it was reasonable to give time for it to have full impact on average AQI.

“The committee decided unanimously to watch the situation for a day or more, before invoking more stringent and disruptive actions under Stage-IV of the GRAP,” an official said. GRAP categorises actions into four stages: Stage I—’poor’ (AQI 201-300); Stage II—’very poor’ (AQI 301-400); Stage III—’severe’ (AQI 401-450); and Stage IV—’severe plus’ (AQI above 450).

A late evening meeting which the L-G chaired, meanwhile, issued a statement saying, “It was decided to appeal to neighbouring states, especially Punjab, which accounted for 1,921 (71.57%) incidents of stubble burning of the total 2,684 on November 1 to curtail crop residue burning by incentivising farmers. Apart from Punjab, 99 cases of ‘parali’ burning were reported in Haryana, 95 in Uttar Pradesh and 60 in Rajasthan,” a statement from the L-G office said.

The meeting, which CM Arvind Kejriwal could not attend, being in MP for poll campaign, further called for strict implementation of GRAP-III, besides advising children and elderly to stay indoors and others to avoid non-essential travel to ease vehicular pollution. AQI in neighbouring areas also plummeted to the ‘severe’ category. Greater Noida was most polluted in NCR with 494 AQI. Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad breached the 400-mark, recording 440, 460 and 410 AQI, respectively. Gurugram and Meerut were in the ‘very poor’ category at AQI of 367 and 387.

Swiss group IQAir said New Delhi fared worst on AQI rankings with a count of 645, followed by Lahore at 355.

Desh Deepak, senior specialist of respiratory medicine at the Central Government’s Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital said people could suffer headaches, irritation, anxiety and nervousness.

Meanwhile, the National Green Tribunal directed the Chief Secretaries of pollution-hit states with ‘poor’, ‘very poor’ and ‘severe’ AQI to take urgent remedial action to prevent pollution.