A group of citizens protest against air pollution at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. (Photo: PTIBoth the Delhi High Court and the principal bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) again took up the issue of the alarming situation of air pollution in the national capital on Wednesday.

The Supreme Court and the principal Bench of the National Green Tribunal on Tuesday heard submissions by the Centre, Delhi and state governments on the alarming situation of air pollution in the national capital.

The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to devise a concrete pollution management plan for Delhi and submit it on Thursday, when the court will pass an order on the urgent measures to be taken to tackle the deadly levels of air pollution in recent weeks.

In parallel proceedings, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) chastised the Delhi government and neighbouring state governments for failing to take appropriate measures to control crop. "What did you do when all this smog was going on and the particulate matter reached beyond prescribed limits? What steps did you take, except till yesterday? For the first five days nobody did anything, be it the states or the Centre," NGT Chairperson Swatanter Kumar said.

The Bench directed the authorities concerned from Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh to submit a mechanism for implementation of the NGT's earlier orders to curb air pollution on Wednesday. The tribunal had on Monday rebuked government authorities for shifting blame instead of taking steps to deal with the alarming levels of pollution.

In Tuesday's hearing, the tribunal also passed several other orders to tackle the situation, which it has dubbed as akin to a situation of emergency. It banned construction activities and the operation of brick kilns and stone crushers for one week throughout the national capital region. It directed the municipal corporation of Delhi to depute 50 per cent of its staff to ensure that there were no waste burning or construction activities.

Water sprinklers

The NGT also pulled up the Delhi government for only using cranes to sprinkle water on roads, instead of utilising choppers as directed by it earlier. It also questioned the shutting of schools without any scientific study. It has now asked the Central Pollution Control Board to collect data on air quality in Delhi for one week, in collaboration with the Delhi Pollution Control Committee.

In a separate plea, a petitioner also approached the NGT on Tuesday, seeking directions to be issued to the Delhi government to provide free masks to senior citizens and school-going children, in light of the authority's failure to control ambient air quality in the national capital.

In the Supreme Court, a Bench presided over by Chief Justice T S Thakur asked Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar whether there was a plan or protocol to meet the problem on an urgent basis, the counsel said he was not aware of it. However, he submitted that the crisis had arisen because of unfettered expansion of the capital, with large changes to the master plan. Earlier, the plan was to prohibit industries within the metropolis but now the policy has been diluted and both industrial and related commercial activities were being permitted.

The solicitor general said there was a meeting of the environment secretary with the authorities concerned on Wednesday and by Thursday some concrete plan could be submitted to the court. The counsel appointed to assist the court in environment matters, Aparajita Sinha, also told the court that Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have expressed their inability to control trucks entering Delhi because of shortages of staff at the entry points. Electronic monitoring equipment have also not been set up yet.

Sinha said municipal authorities have not addressed the waste burning issue within the city and neither have they controlled construction activities. In the meantime, the Badarpur thermal plant has been shut, but the central ministry has promised to give gas in place of coal to restart the unit.

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