Over a year after launch, study to find sources of Delhi’s pollution stops

According to a source associated with the project, IIT-Kanpur’s agreement with the Delhi government to carry out the study has come to an end. The government had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IIT-Kanpur in 2021 to carry out the real-time source apportionment study at a cost of Rs 12.72 crore after the project was approved by the Delhi Cabinet.

Apart from categorising how PM (particulate matter) 2.5 stemmed from sources including the transport sector, biomass burning, and soil and road dust, the system was meant to generate air pollution forecasts. Based on the sources identified and forecasts issued, the government was supposed to act on the city’s pollution problem.

An online dashboard that was set up to make the real-time data public is no longer accessible. DPCC Member Secretary K S Jayachandran did not respond to questions on Friday.

The study was also a part of action plans meant to control air pollution in the summer of 2022 and 2023; it did not find a place in the action plan that Environment Minister Gopal Rai announced on Thursday.

A Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) official said the period of the agreement with IIT-Kanpur was over, having ended last year, and now the Environment Department would have to decide what was to be done with the equipment purchased for the project.

A mobile van was also part of the project. Rai had said in May last year that the van was to be stationed at pollution hotspots to determine sources of pollution in these areas.

AAP spokesperson Reena Gupta, meanwhile, said several consultations were done before deciding to use this technology. “It was not just a standalone lab, but a comprehensive plan, with mobile vans that were supposed to be stationed in different places. In Delhi, the bureaucrats decided to stop the study,” she claimed.

This is not the first time, however, that the study has run into trouble.

Last year, it was stalled briefly following a disagreement between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Delhi government and the DPCC chairman. In October 2023, Rai wrote to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal accusing DPCC Chairman Ashwani Kumar of trying to “sabotage the project.” According to Rai, the project was stalled after Kumar questioned the project cost and the findings of the study.

Minister Atishi had said then that Kumar had halted the lab’s operations by not paying a pending amount of Rs 2 crore.

After a prayer before the Supreme Court last year asked that the DPCC be directed to release data from the source apportionment study and publish data for the sources at least for the winter season of 2023-24, the court allowed the prayers and directed compliance in November.

The dashboard then beganto display real-time data once again.