In the first week of November Delhi woke up to the smog at its thickest for the season. The newspapers said that Graded Response Action Plan (Grap) stage III guidelines have been made operational and that a large number of vehicles would be going off the road as long as the guidelines remain operational.
The Delhi government at its end ‘discharged its responsibility and obligation’ by declaring holidays in the schools. The MLAs of the ruling party did their quota of levelling charges saying that the Delhi police stopped them in their fight against pollution. Seriously?
On the day they were protesting their party leader and chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was away campaigning in Singrauli Madhya Pradesh. Worse, he was in the company of party leader and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann. The poor state of air in Delhi, which is suffocating its residents, has largely been caused by stubble fire in the fields of Punjab.
On its part, the Punjab government has washed its hands of the blame that stubble burning in the state was cause for pollution in the national Capital and the adjoining areas. In a newspaper report last week, Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) chief is reported to have said, “The NGT has already been informed about the standard operation procedure adopted by the Punjab government and PPCB to tackle stubble burning especially in the hotspot districts. However, the board and agriculture department have geared up to control any sort of situation in case the number of cases increase in coming days as the figures continue to fluctuate till November 30, when we get the final number of total cases.”