Delhi govt plans long-term action plan to beat air pollution

Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai on Monday said the city government will soon come up with a long-term action plan to curb air pollution.

He held an online round table conference with experts that focused on formulating measures to reduce air pollution in Delhi.

Rai said the Arvind Kejriwal government does not wish to wait till September when air pollution increases in Delhi.

“With the help of experts, we want to create a long-term action plan to combat air pollution throughout the year,” a statement quoted him as saying.

"Talking about environmental pollution only during the winter months, starting from October when air quality becomes severe, is not a solution. We are, in the next few days, going to come up with an action plan to further better the AQI of Delhi,” he said.

The minister also requested the experts to submit their presentations for further study.

On the first day of the round table conference, the discussion centered on road dust resuspension, dust pollution due to construction and demolition activities, and industrial pollution control.

The key speakers were Anumita Roy Chowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment; Mukesh Sharma of IIT Kanpur; Gufran Beig of Indian Institute Of Tropical Meteorology; Deepak Agarwal of IL&FS; Partha Basu of Environmental Defence Fund; Siddharth Virmani of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago; Brikesh Singh of Clean Your Collective; and Akshima Ghare from Rocky Mountain Institute.