PATIALA: Punjab Pollution Control Board chairman A S Marwaha, on Monday, said Delhi authorities should check internal sources of pollution instead of blaming the agrarian state for pollution.
Track the pollution level in your city
Marwaha said air quality index (AQI) in Punjab is in the ‘satisfactory to moderate’ category, while it is ‘very poor’ in Delhi. He asked if it was possible that a state with better AQI could create pollution in another state. Marwaha said cities like Panipat, Sonepat, Jind and Karnal in Haryana have poorer AQI than Punjab’s Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Khanna, Mandi Gobindgarh and Patiala.
Marwaha said stubble fire in Punjab could not be the major contributing factor in deteriorating air quality of NCR, especially New Delhi. Rather, he said, it is internal polluting sources of NCR and climatic conditions that develop from October to March every year.
The chairman said if farm fires were the major reason for deteriorating air quality, ambient air quality of Punjab would have also have shown similar trends as it is also recipient of pollutants through trans-boundary transportation from neighbouring countries due to stubble fires.
He said AQI of Punjab is generally in the moderate range (100-200), whereas AQI of Delhi stations crosses very poor category.
Marwaha added air quality in Delhi and NCR was poor even in December, January and February, when there were no farm fires and could only be caused by pollutants from internal sources like industry, power plants, vehicular traffic, residential and airport activity, municipal solid waste landfill site fires, eateries, construction activities and other anthropogenic activities.