50 roving teams from CPCB to check pollution as IMD develops 'better' mapping system

new delhi: Facing flak from the Aam Aadmi Party-led government over anti-pollution measures, the Central Pollution Control Board is all set to deploy 50 teams this winter for a strict vigil on polluting activities, said the Union Environment Ministry on Wednesday as the Ministry of Earth Sciences added that an advanced high-resolution air quality early warning system for the Capital as well as a separate one for the country had been operationalised.

The CPCB team will be making extensive field visits from Thursday to February 28 next year in Delhi and NCR towns that include Noida, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Gurugram, Faridabad, Ballabgarh, Jhajjar, Panipat, Sonepat, Bhiwadi, Alwar and Bharatpur. The ministry said the teams will focus on "hotspot areas where the problem is aggravated".

Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department's high-resolution city scale model ENFUSER (ENvironmental information FUsion SERvice) for Delhi has been operationalised to identify the air pollution hotspots and pollution up to the street level, which according to VK Soni, head of the Environment Monitoring Research Centre of the IMD, is a better model to capture pollution.

The Environment Ministry said CPCB teams will report polluters and polluting activities along with flouting of guidelines in realtime through the SAMEER application and will also share details with respective state governments for quick action.