As Delhi grappled with worsening air pollution, the new air quality monitoring stations that the State government had said would be ready by October-end were yet to be fully functional on Tuesday.
Environment Minister Imran Hussain had said in official statements over the past few months that 10 new Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) stations would be ready by Diwali, which was on October 19, and another 10 would be completed by the end of the month.
As per DPCC officials, the stations have been installed and are being tested.
A formal inauguration is likely this week, said a senior official. A revamped DPCC site where real-time data from the new stations as well as the six old ones would also be launched.
But as on Tuesday, of the six existing stations, data was available for only four — Anand Vihar, Mandir Marg, Punjabi Bagh and R.K. Puram — while the pages for two stations: IGI Airport and Civil Lines, were “under maintenance”.
Of the new stations, PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations were publicly available at three locations - Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, ITI Jehangirpuri and Bramprakash Ayurvedic Hospital in Najafgarh. For the remaining, either there was no data or just the level of one pollutant.