NEW DELHI: In order to implement city-specific plans in 132 cities under the Centre’s National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), different urban local bodies, state pollution control boards and institutes of repute (IoRs) on Friday signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) for executing multiple actions on the ground in a time-bound manner.
The IoRs such as IITs, NITs, various CSIR’s institutions and other scientific bodies will help these non-attainment cities as knowledge partners. These are the cities which do not meet the national ambient air quality standards. Such cities include Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Agra, Kanpur, Varanasi, Bengaluru, Noida, Ghaziabad, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Patna and others in the list of 132. The IIT Delhi will be the IoR for Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad.
Noting importance of all less polluting activities in ensuring better air quality in cities, Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar, on the occasion, urged the states to quickly procure e-buses for public transport purposes sanctioned under the FAME scheme of the central government.
Regretting that only 600 buses have been procured and are operational despite allocation of funds for 6000 e-buses to 62 cities across the country, Javadekar said if any city fails to utilize the funds sanctioned for procurement of e-buses, the allocation will go to other cities. “I have written to chief ministers of states to speed up the process of procuring sanctioned e-buses quickly,” said the minister.
The NCAP, launched in January 2019, is a long-term, time-bound, national level strategy to tackle air pollution problems across the country in a comprehensive manner with targets to achieve 20% to 30% reduction in particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) concentrations by 2024 from 2017 levels.
“Today’s initiative is in line with the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of curbing air pollution by 20% in the next four years in over 100 cities… It is not an easy task but a tough challenge which we all need to achieve together,” said the minister while urging states to take all identified actions on the ground to ensure clean air.
The city action plans under the NCAP have been prepared to control specific air pollution sources through multidimensional actions by brining several implementation agencies together. Expansion of ambient air quality network, source apportionment studies, public awareness, grievance redressal mechanism and sector specific action points are part of these action plans.
“A ‘national knowledge network’, comprising leading air quality specialists, has also been constituted as a technical advisory group to support activities under NCAP and guide local IoRs in conducting air quality researches,” said an official statement.