Delhi govt to prepare 3-level action plan to curb pollution

NEW DELHI: Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai on Thursday said the Delhi government will prepare a three-level action plan – quarterly, annually and five years – to reduce pollution in the national capital.

Rai held a meeting with experts who suggested the government to issue a direction to agencies that no outdoor construction activities should be conducted in winters when the pollution levels rise.

The minister said the experts also suggested that there should be an inter-state action committee to take steps to curb pollution.

Delhi Government has organized a roundtable conference on reducing air pollution in the Delhi secretariat and presided over by Gopal Rai, the Environment Minister of Delhi.

The conference was attended by experts from the field of environmental pollution, especially air pollution, NGOs, civil society organizations, and environmental departments and agencies from various

sectors.

The conference recommended that a Joint Action Plan be devised so that all the agencies can be roped in to devise solutions in this respect

"After listening to all the experts at the conference, we have analysed three major components through which we can address the issue of air pollution. All the experts, whether from TERI, Washington University, IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur, have identified four major sources of pollution in the city - transport or vehicular pollution, dust pollution, biomass pollution, and industrial pollution. The experts suggested that first, the government shall prepare an action plan to address these four issue areas and work," Gopal Rai added.

"The third suggestion that we have received is that like last year when we had 40 monitoring centres, including the Central government and Delhi government, we identified 13 hotspots. We had undertaken various methods to control pollution. Now the suggestion is to carry out an action plan, on all 40 centres," Rai added.