Delhi’s Air Quality Index (AQI) has remained lodged between the ‘poor’ and ‘very poor’ since Diwali.
Last day, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) posted a photo of the faintly visible India Gate. “India Gate has disappeared in Delhi…No matter how much the government tampers with the AQI, India Gate has exposed the BJP's true colours by vanishing behind the smog,” the party’s Delhi unit wrote on X.
Speaking to reporters, AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj accused, “The AQI you see on your mobile phones, most apps take data from the Delhi and central governments' AQI monitoring stations. If you see iPhone's Weather app, they only take data from the government monitoring stations - DPCC, CPCB, and IMD. Only some apps have their own monitoring stations, like the US embassy.”
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Following these, in a video posted on X, Bharadwaj stood outside one of these monitoring stations and pointed to trucks claiming they belonged to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
“Water is being sprayed day and night around the Pollution Monitoring Centre located at ISBT so that the machines show lower AQI readings and false data can be presented to the world,” AAP alleged in a separate post.
Priyanka Gandhi urges PM Modi and Delhi CM to act
Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi echoed the same concern and said the Capital’s smog was “a grey shroud.”
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“Returning to the Delhi air from Wayanad first, then Bachwara in Bihar, is truly shocking. The pollution enveloping this city is like a grey shroud thrown over it,” she said in a post on X, urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta to act urgently.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh, meanwhile, questioned the government’s approach to tackling the crisis. Quoting a study from IIT Delhi’s Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, he wrote that the report “makes it clear that winter cloud seeding will not help improve the atrocious air quality in Delhi in any significant manner,” adding that ₹34 crore had already been spent on the trials.
