NEW DELHI: Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia here on Wednesday questioned the decision of Lt. Governor Anil Baijal to stop the formation of the state Wakf Board.

“Why Delhi’s LGs, current and former, want to run Wakf Board themselves or through officers? “Is it because there is lot of corruption in rent of Wakf Board properties?” he asked.

Sisodia said that there were gangs who’ve encroached on Wakf Board land and they don’t want an elected goverment to run the board.

He also said that the High Court had asked Baijal to put on hold the appointment of only the seventh member of the board, but Baijal stopped formation of the board instead.

Separately, based on a pollution report that does not includes the top polluting areas of the city, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on WEdnesday said the pollution levels in 2017 were lowest in past five years.

Sisodia was citing a report of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), a copy of which is with IANS, that compares the effluents levels of six regions across Delhi — Pitampura, Sirfort, Janakpuri, Nizamuddin, ShahzadaBagh and Shahdara, from 2013 to 2017.

However, top polluting areas, where air quality has ranged from “severe to severe plus” for most of the polluting days throughout the year, were not considered.

According to records, the areas recording the most pollution include Anand Vihar in east Delhi, Mathura Road and RK Puram in sourth Delhi, Mandir Marg and ITO crossing in central Delhi, ISBT Kashmiri Gate and Delhi University North Campus in north Delhi, and Punjabi Bagh in west Delhi.

“According to CPCB data, in 2017, annual average of pollution levels of PM2.5 and PM10 is lowest in the past five years,” Sisodia said.

At present, CPCB has a netweork of 17 pollution monitoring stations across different areas of Delhi. The report however focused only on the six under national air quality monitoring (NAMP) stations, that showed minor improvement.

“The data (of report) is from the manual monitoring that CPCB has been doing since 2013,” CPCB scientist and spokesperson D Saha told IANS.

The CPCB report included four major pollutants, namely sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matters PM2.5 and PM10, or particles in air with diameter less than 2.5 and 10 micrometres.