Polluted cities to now get a time frame to cut emissions

NEW DELHI: Set to be finalised by this month end to combat air pollution, the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) may not have uniform targets for all polluted cities but will indicate timeline for actions as suggested recently by Niti Aayog.


“The ministry will incorporate the Aayog’s latest 15-point draft action plan and its time-line in the NCAP. We can, however, just suggest it to states and help them build their capacities. States will themselves have to come out with their own targets to cut emissions,” said a top official. He said, “We, in any case, will not drop our ambition. The Centre will work with states for their city-specific plans and targets.”


Though NITI Aayog’s draft paper — Breathe India: An Action Plan for Combating Air Pollution — is focussed on measures only for the country’s top 10 most polluted cities, the suggestions can well be adopted for all nearly 100 non-attainment cities which were identified under the proposed NCAP.

A non-attainment city is considered to have air quality worse than the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The Aayog’s plan includes short-term and longterm measures that need to be undertaken by the cities.

Environmentalists, however, found the Aayog’s suggestions quite unrealistic. “It talks about various measures, but is completely silent on direction of reforms. It doesn’t even refer to the NCAP. They all seem to work in silos,” said environment lawyer Ritwick Dutta.

“It will be a positive step to phase out private diesel vehicles by 2022. But, how will you do it when you continue to allow registration of diesel vehicles now? Will you tell an owner of newly registered car to stop using it after four years? The draft is full of such general suggestions.”