Environment minister Gopal Rai on Tuesday opened the “Green War Room” at the Delhi secretariat to help the government monitor air pollution in the city this winter.
Rai said that the war room — which was first launched in 2020 — will function round the clock and will consist of a team of 17 members, which will include engineers and scientists from the state environment department and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC).
The move comes after chief minister Arvind Kejriwal last Thursday unveiled a 15-point winter action plan to kick in from October 1.
Under it, teams from various agencies will fan out across the city to intensify vehicle checks, curb sources of dust and industrial pollution, stop crop-burning, and carry out regular cleaning of roads in an effort to stave off the annual pre-winter air quality crisis. The CM also urged other National Capital Region (NCR) states to assist in the efforts, especially on curbing farm fires and the use of firecrackers on Diwali.
“CM Kejriwal announced the winter action plan on September 29. We have also been closely monitoring the air quality and stubble-burning situation in and around Delhi. To give a more hands-on approach and enable 24×7 monitoring of all our efforts, we are starting a ‘Green War Room’ from today,” Rai said on Tuesday.
The minister added that DPCC senior environment scientist Nandita Moitra has been appointed as the in-charge of the 17-member war room. Out of these, 13 have been appointed as nodal officers – one for each of Delhi’s 13 pollution hot spots.
“These 13 members will remain in the war room and track progress and air quality at hot spots. They will also have to carry out field visits at these hot spots,” a government official aware of the development said, adding that the total number of members in the room have also been increased from nine.
To be sure, DPCC and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) had in 2018 identified 13 pollution hot spots in Delhi — Anand Vihar, Mundka, Wazirpur, Jahangirpuri, RK Puram, Rohini, Punjabi Bagh, Okhla, Bawana, Vivek Vihar, Narela, Ashok Vihar and Dwarka.
The environment minister added that the war room will also track farm fires through satellite imagery from the American space agency National Aeronautics Space Administration (Nasa) and carry out speedy redressal of complaints on the “Green Delhi” mobile application wherein citizens can report violations of anti-pollution norms.
Rai said that acting on complaints on this app will be the war room’s priority. “The members of this war room will work to communicate and monitor all the complaints received on the Green Delhi app to the departments concerned. A total of 70,684 complaints have been received on the app so far this year, of which 90% have been resolved,” he said, adding that the department will work to act on fresh complaints within a matter of days.
According to data shared by the government, of the 70,684 complaints on the app, 45,208 complaints came from areas under the jurisdiction of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). This was followed by 10,928 complaints under the Public Works Department’s (PWD) ambit, and 4,289 from areas under the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).
Meanwhile, Dipankar Saha, former head of CPCB’s air laboratory, said such a high number of complaints on the app was an indicator of the difficulties people were facing at the neighbourhood level, in relation to air pollution.
“Proper on-ground redressal of complaints should be the primary focus of the war room. The government can also expand the manual air quality measurement network and use this war room to monitor its data too,” he said.
Article source: hindustantimes.com
