'Delhi needs GRAP, not aerial water sprinkling'

NEW DELHI: The aerial sprinkling of water would not be of much help for the Capital to control the pollution as this is only effective for small areas, asserted the experts.

They also said that for the Capital the most effective plan would be to start the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) a month before the Diwali instead of two days before.

On Monday, the environment minister of Delhi Imran Hussain wrote a letter to Union Ministry to provide the aerial sprinkling of water in Delhi.

The government also asserted that they will bear the cost of this process.

"This process will not help Delhi as a whole as it is effective for a very small area and it would be very costly for the government. Instead of this, the government should explore the ground level options to curb pollution," said Sunil Dahiya of Greenpeace India.

He also said that the there are other more significant sources that are collectively deteriorating air quality, especially in North India.

If the Environment ministry is committed to protecting and safeguarding public health from air pollution, then we need stronger regulatory action and better-designed awareness campaigns to enforce existing plans.

A systematic, coordinated, time-bound, and comprehensive action plan addressing all sources of pollution is need of the hour and certainly, we cannot deny the impact of poor air quality.

Agreeing to his arguments Anumita Roychowdhury of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said, " This process will increase the moisture of the climate before the winter which will in future become dangerous for the air quality and health."

The experts suggested that Delhi would need plant like GRAP to be introduced much earlier as the city pollution is recurring phenomenon and happening every year.

Delhi and NCR cannot continue to remain in emergency mode all the time to address this public health crisis.

A comprehensive action plan must combine short and long-term strategies for vehicles, industry, waste burning and construction activities for more sustained and longer-term gains," said Roychowdhury.