Punjab residents ask politicians to set air quality agendas
Darpan News Desk The Canadian Press, 28 Oct, 2021 10:19 AM
Chandigarh, Oct 28 (IANS) In the lead up to the Assembly polls in Punjab, experts and civil society members on Thursday discussed and developed a detailed set of recommendations to improve air quality across the state here.
The recommendations will now be included in the people's manifesto to tackle air pollution and will be soon submitted to all political parties.
Organised by EcoSikh and Clean Air Punjab, a citizen's collective working on the issue of air pollution, over 50 prominent citizens across the state attended the meeting.
Citizens' demands focused on their right to clean air and the ability to breathe, highlighting the fact that Punjab is home to some of India's most polluted cities, including Mandi Gobindgarh, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Khanna, and Patiala.
Speaking about how citizen groups have elevated the dialogue on air pollution and made it an election issue for the upcoming legislative elections, Supreet Kaur, President of EcoSikh, said, "The year is the first time that air pollution has been highlighted in citizen campaigns across Punjab. The momentum built by citizen groups, health practitioners and experts has taken years to reach its current scale,"
She said residents of the state are up in arms seeing the toxic air not only impacting them but also their children.
Kaur said the people will vote for their right to clean air this election and no matter who gets elected, they will hold their leaders responsible to lead and bring about the necessary changes to safeguard the health of people from air pollution.
One of the key recommendations that was unanimously agreed was increasing the air quality monitoring network in the state.
Punjab has a total of nine non-attainment or million-plus cities under the National Clean Air Action Plan (NCAP) and everyone in the deliberation agreed that each non-attainment city should have a minimum of five real-time air quality monitoring stations covering the diverse type of land uses, which included residential, traffic, industrial, mixed-use or commercial areas.
Further, villages close to the non-attainment cities should have at least two real-time monitoring stations each.
Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental challenges India is facing today.
On Tuesday, the Delhi Police had said that they have busted a Pakistan-based terror module and arrested six persons, including two people -- Zeeshan and Javed -- who were trained in Pakistan.
According to the police, the accused, Raju Chaudhary, who was arrested from Jammu has revealed during the interrogation that Wazir was shot dead on September 3 and four more people were present at the time of the incident. A police official informed that former NC leader, Wazir, was also given sedatives before being killed.
Farmers said the UPPCL sent arbitrary electricity bills and if the farmers failed to pay, they are harassed unnecessarily. The farmers locked the door of the power discom office at Noida's sector 16 and continued their protest outside.
Two Pakistan-based men, including a Pakistani intelligence officer, have also been identified and booked in the case, in which one person was arrested earlier, DGP Dinkar Gupta disclosed on Wednesday.
Reacting to the Samyukt Kisan Morcha's criticism of the remarks he had made on Monday in this regard, he lamented that despite his government's unequivocal support to their cause, the farmers had misinterpreted his appeal and had, instead, tried to link it with the upcoming Assembly polls in the state.
Sample this. According to the All India Rice Exporters' Association, in 2018-19 India exported 951 tonnes but the figure shot up in 2020-21 to touch 33,1571 tonnes.
