A wonderful Wednesday? Not quite, but things got slightly better with the air quality level shifting from severe to very bad in Delhi. The air quality index, which had almost touched 500 Tuesday last week, was 308 on Tuesday. Visibility too improved. However, mask sellers have appeared on the pavements of crowded Lakshmi Nagar and the CISF staff, manning the metro stations, too were seen sporting them. Hotels were installing air purifiers according to advertisements on social media.
The highly politicised subject of smog which saw Delhi, Punjab and Haryana passing the blame to the other, not cooperating simply because three different political parties, and local interests are involved, got a wee bit of a breather.
Though the odd-even scheme could not get a green signal from the National Green Tribunal, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattart, making a special dash to Chandigarh, and discussed a joint effort to tackle what is plaguing not just the national capital territory, but all of north India.
At the end of a meeting, a joint statement said they had agreed upon the need for action. “We agreed upon the need for action on many measures aimed at predicting its re-occurance in the winter of 2018”, they said.
Kejriwal's government, incidentally, suggested the idea of road rationing that the odd-even scheme effectively is, could be implemented by the administrations of Ghaziabad and Gurgaon that fall in the NCT. Though that did not come up for discussion when Kejriwal and Khattar met, the Haryana chief minister said they had jointly identified action points, and the next few days would see some of them get implemented.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarender Singh saw no point in discussing the smog issue with his Delhi counterpart. This is because the burning of stubble in his state is being traced to the smog, and he feels the Central government has to help with funds to enable farmers to dispose them of, among other things. He also prefers to wait for the NGT and Supreme court hearings on the matter.
Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari called for a holistic approach to what is becoming an annual feature. Opposing the idea of odd-even scheme, he said, “It is not as if the problem will be solved if the odd-even scheme is introduced. Climate changes are behind this, and the issue has to be studied and solved scientifically,”, adding he has taken up the matter with Environment and Forests Minister Harsh Vardhan. Gadkari also used the opportunity to say that the impending completion of a stretch of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway alone will reduce the pollution from automobiles in the capital by 50 per cent, as vehicles from all over north India can then bypass Delhi.
