Stakeholders discuss gaps in NCAP to provide critique to MoEF

Apart from the addressing the gaps in the programme, they also criticised the ministry for the lack of initiative to consult the public. The National Clean Air Programme, a national level strategy for controlling air pollution, was introduced to increase the ambient air quality monitoring network, improve data dissemination and to come up with a feasible management plan.

While the programme promises to add 300 manual monitoring stations, which is not enough for 4,000 cities, Kankana Das, an analyst from the Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE) said, “There is also no clarity on which cities will be covered and how the data will be disseminated. Chennai should have at least 38 Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) but has only three. While Coimbatore should have at least 19 but has none.”

The discussion also focussed on the budget allocation, terming it as questionable