Only 38 of 131 cities meet annual pollution cut targets

Nagpur: Four years and Rs 6,879 crore into the country’s flagship National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), some of the top polluted non-attainment cities in 2019 have marginally improved their particulate matter 2.5 and 10 levels but continue to breach the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) safety limits. Moreover, only 38 of the 131 cities that were given the annual pollution reduction targets managed to meet them in the 2021-2022 fiscal.
This, and other crucial facts, were revealed in two separate analyses done by organizations NCAP Tracker and Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
Launched in January 2019, NCAP initially set a target of reducing PM10 and PM2.5 levels by 20-30% in 2024, taking pollution levels in 2017 as the base year to improve upon.
In September 2022, the Centre set a new target of a 40% reduction in particulate matter concentration in cities covered under NCAP by 2026.
According to CREA’ analysis, cities like Allahabad, Lucknow, Varanasi, Srinagar and Moradabad have shown improvements in PM10 concentrations of more than 50 microgrammes per cubic meter (mpcm) while others like Vasai-Virar, Durgapur, Byrnihat and Kala Amb showed deterioration in the air quality by similar concentrations.
The analysis done by NCAP Tracker revealed that New Delhi had the most toxic air in 2022, with an annual average PM 2.5 concentration of 99.71 mpcm. “Most cities in the top ten most polluted list are from the Indo-Gangetic Plain, demonstrating that real and long-term solutions lie in an airshed approach to address the need for better air pollution management in the region beyond Delhi,” it stated.
Based on the PM 2.5 and 10 concentrations of non-attainment cities, the least polluted 10 cities represent a more diverse part of the country. “Last year, the cleanest city with a PM 2.5 concentration of 26.33 mpcm was Srinagar followed by Kohima (Nagaland), with a PM 10 concentration of 26.77 ug/m3,” the analysis found.
CREA’s study further highlighted that only 37 out of 131 cities have completed the source apportionment studies which were supposed to be completed in 2020. “Almost all of these reports still lack public availability and no city action plan has been updated. The National Emission Inventory is also yet to be formalised in the country which had to be completed by 2020,” it stated.
It also stressed that the country will have to install more than 300 manual air quality monitoring stations per year to reach the NCAP goal of 1,500 monitoring stations by 2024. Calling it a “tall task” as only 180 stations were installed in the last four years, CREA analyst Sunil Dahiya said, “India has an extensive network of ambient air quality monitoring stations installed by industries and we should make use of that infrastructure. Data from industries should be made public and integrated with government air ambient air quality monitoring which will not only help increase public air quality data availability but will also enhance the accountability of the industries forcing them to operate the stations efficiently.”
Stressing that air quality across cities in north India remains very poor to severe, director of Climate Trends Aarti Khosla said, “The top four cities with the highest PM2.5 are Delhi and NCR cities and the top 9 are from across the Indo-Gangetic plains. The results are not surprising, but the detailed examination also bust myths and show that coastal cities like Mumbai are equally affected by air pollution. While the CPCB has already issued stricter reduction targets for the non-attainment cities, we are just a year away from 2024, the original target for NCAP. Many cities are still far from reaching their reduction targets and may be unable to do so without aggressive plans and stringent measures.”
10 Most Polluted Non-Attainment Cities in 2022
City—PM2.5—No of Active Monitors
New Delhi—99.71—39
Faridabad—95.64—4
Ghaziabad—91.25—4
Patna—90.88—6
Muzaffarpur—86.92—3
Noida—80.44—4
Meerut—77.68—3
Gobindgarh—72.39—1
Gaya—70.84—3
Jodhpur—69.3—1