Diwali only days away but BMC extends deadline to acquire AQI monitoring vans

“The pre-bid meetings were concluded recently and we have received queries from 15 bidders from all over the country for supplying these machines. This is a good response. Therefore, we have extended the deadline to ensure more players come in and a competitive rate is maintained,” the official said.

According to sources, after the tender deadline closes next week, the BMC will evaluate the submissions and within a week the contractor would be selected for supplying the vans. Following this, the civic authorities will issue the letter of acceptance or work order within a week. The cost of acquiring these four vans stands at Rs 5 crore.

The vehicles that the BMC aims to acquire will have AQI monitoring devices mounted on them. Civic officials said that the idea is to deploy these vans in areas that don’t have proper monitoring infrastructure. At present, Mumbai has a network of 28 AQI monitoring stations. However, these stations are static and record data of a particular area.

“If we record that one particular area is witnessing bad AQI numbers consistently, then we can deploy these vans over there to understand if there’s any pattern in pollution. In areas like Byculla or Andheri where small-scale cottage industries and bakeries are there, regular monitoring is not possible. Therefore, we can deploy these vans in these places to get better clarity,” the official said.

Civic officials said besides understanding the pattern and trend of pollution, these vans will also help the authorities to understand the sources of pollution on whether they are caused by vehicular emission or construction dust.

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