Supreme Court orders flouted; Delhi’s air quality worsens

For today’s episode of Aaj Ka AQI, we stood at the flyover in front of Akshardham Temple to gauge the toll of last night’s relentless firecracker bursting.

The firecrackers had gone off across Delhi on Sunday night, and by morning the city lay under a thick blanket of smog, with visibility sharply reduced and smoke hanging over the streets. Things got so bad last night that some families with members suffering from heart or respiratory ailments left the city as a precaution.

Congress leader Ajay Maken alleged that on the night of November 8 and November 9, PM2.5 data was not recorded at several air quality monitoring stations operated by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Just as Delhi’s air was turning really toxic, this crucial metric was missing from many of the stations mandated to track it. 

According to Dr Manoj Kumar, analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), 227 hourly PM2.5 observations were missing across 59 CPCB monitoring stations between midnight on November 8 and 5 am on November 9. “Only 14 stations reported complete data, while the remaining 45 had at least one missing hourly observation,” he noted in his X post this morning. Even Hindustan Times’s analysis of CPCB records shows that PM2.5 readings at many Delhi stations climbed towards 1,000 µg/m³ on Diwali night and then went blank. 

The Supreme Court had allowed the bursting of firecrackers only between 6 am and 7 am and between 8 pm and 10 pm, and only “green” ones. These rules were flouted with abandon in many parts of the city, with crackers going up into the wee hours of November 9.

How bad was the air quality? According to some private AQI monitoring organisations, Delhi’s Air Quality Index (AQI) crossed 1,700. By Monday morning, winds brought some relief and pollution levels dipped slightly, but that’s not likely to last. The city’s average AQI stood at 376 (“very poor”) at 7 am, per CPCB’s Sameer app. 

Also, according to a report by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) covering the period up to November 8, Punjab has recorded 4,459 incidents of stubble burning, adding to the capital’s worsening air quality.

But Delhi’s pollution problem doesn't begin with Diwali fireworks or end with the stubble-burning season. Its industries emit year-round, with this Indian Express report highlighting that 54% of high-polluting units breached emission limits this season.

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