Gurgaon fared worst in dealing with complaints related to pollution in Nov: CPCB

Gurgaon's enforcement authorities have given the poorest performance in the National Capital Region (NCR) in November in dealing with complaints related to violation of pollution norms, the Central Pollution Control Board has said.

With an implementation score of 36 per cent, Noida performed the best among NCR towns in November. Delhi had an implementation score of just 31.77 per cent, while Faridabad and Ghaziabad had an score of 28 and 26.72 per cent respectively.

Gurgaon's authorities have given the poorest performance in the NCR at an implementation score of just 4.7 per cent, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said in a report.

The implementation score is the ratio of action taken score to incident score and the scores were released for the month of November.

In November, the total number of inspections carried out at Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Faridabad and Gurgaon were 451, and 2,791 violations were observed.

The most prominent polluting activities were construction, road dust re-suspension, open burning and traffic congestion.

The CPCB had repeatedly termed the enforcement bodies' actions on public complaints against pollution "grossly inadequate".

On December 2, the CPCB had sent show-cause notices to municipal bodies SDMC and EDMC for failing to check air polluting activities under their jurisdiction, asking why their commissioners should not be prosecuted for inaction.

The Supreme Court had asked the CPCB to prosecute government officials for not acting on around 250 complaints received by it from citizens.

"Why don't you prosecute these officials? You should prosecute them.

"Let these people realise what they have done, the top court had told the CPCB.

Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority Chairperson Bhure Lal had also lashed out at enforcement agencies, alleging that Delhi's civic and urban bodies were "not properly implementing" the directions issued to curb pollution.

Delhi has been battling alarming levels of pollution for over two months with the air quality oscillating between 'poor' and 'severe' categories.