MPs, bureaucrats skip Parliamentary Standing Committee meeting on air pollution

Top officials of the Environment Ministry, DDA and municipal commissioners stayed away from a key meeting of a parliamentary panel on the issue of severe pollution in the national capital. According to sources, members present at the meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development were upset with those absent and planned to raise the issue with the Speaker.

New Delhi:As Delhiites breathed in toxic air for the past many days, a meeting of a parliamentary standing committee to discuss the rising levels of air pollution in the national capital was postponed as most participants, including Member of Parliament from East Delhi, Gautam Gambhir, were absent.

Even as the Supreme Court pulled up agencies over worsening air quality in the national capital, officers from the agencies responsible for tackling air pollution on Friday chose to be absent from an important meeting called by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development here.

Only four MPs were present while out of the 29 on the list including many top officials like the Environment Secretary, Forest Secretary, the Secretary dealing with climate change, Delhi Development Authority (DDA) representative and the three chiefs of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi failed to turn up for the meeting.

The MPs who were present include Jagdambika Pal, Hussain Masoodi, CR Patil and Sanjay Singh.

On account of the absences, the meeting was called off.

One of them, the BJP's Gautam Gambhir, was among those who missed the meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development.

He was widely trolled in social media with a photograph of his former cricketer V.V.S. Laxman enjoying jalebis.

“The agenda for Friday’s meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee was circulated a week back, which clearly stated that the objective was to discuss air pollution in Delhi-NCR. However, East Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir did not attend it,” a tweet by Aam Aadmi Party said.

“Delhi is choking and Gambhir is busy enjoying in Indore,” AAP said.

Commissioner of North Delhi Municipal Corporation Varsha Joshi said that she is in Lucknow attending a meeting on urban mobility scheduled months in advance, therefore, she could not attend the Delhi meeting.

“The Urban Mobility Conference is organised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, which was planned months in advance,” Joshi said.

Actor-politician Hema Malini, the BJP MP from Mathura, too gave the meeting a miss.

Meanwhile, Union Minister Prakash Javdekar said that he will look into the matter.

He said, "I have ordered a joint action plan and the teams are working on it. Joint cooperation of all agencies is needed to fight pollution. "

What was the pollution meet all about?

The questions that the members were planning to raise included: As there are about 50 lakh cars on the roads in Delhi, is the government coming up with any sort of carpool policy or regulation?

Another question was that the Union Government, Rs 1,150 crores were given by the Centre to the states in the last year to combat air pollution along with 14,000 machines. Does the government have a quantitative and qualitative utilisation report of the money disbursed?

The third question to be raised pertained to the Supreme Court's recent observation that everybody ranging from the secretary to the gram pradhan will be held responsible for losses due to air pollution. Does the government, in this regard, intend to define and fix responsibility through an internal mechanism?

The national capital is battling alarming levels of air pollution for the past few weeks. The air quality further deteriorated in the last four days, forcing authorities to shut schools for two days.