New Delhi:The National Green Tribunal has sought responses from the Delhi police chief and the special commissioner of traffic management about measures taken to mitigate air pollution due to vehicular movement and parking issues.
It also observed that a transparent process should be followed to invoke different stages of the anti-pollution measure Graded Response Action Plan (GPAP).
The green body was hearing the issue of deteriorating air quality in the National Capital Region (NCR), necessitating the invoking of various stages of GRAP.
In an order dated October 24, a bench of NGT Chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava said, "Now, the winter has started, and we find that the Air Quality Index (AQI) on October 23 in Delhi was 364 in the very poor category which reflects that there is a lapse on the part of the authorities in preventing the dip in the air quality in NCR."
The bench, also comprising judicial member Justice Arun Kumar Tyagi and expert member A Senthil Vel, noted a report by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) dated October 23 about the GRAP schedule being "comprehensively reviewed" and that Stage I of GRAP was invoked when the average AQI of the national capital was higher than 200 for a "sufficiently long duration."
Expressing its dissatisfaction, the tribunal said, "It is not disclosed as to the average of how many days are taken to invoke stage I and it is also not disclosed what duration is treated to be sufficiently long." "We feel that the objective criteria need to be applied, and a transparent process needs to be adopted for invoking the different stages of GRAP," it added.