Delhi’s air quality deteriorated further during the day, breaching the 400 mark, and dipping into the ‘Severe+’ category, forcing the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), the Centre’s anti-pollution panel, to impose GRAP 4 restrictions in the national capital and its adjoining areas from tonight.

This comes hours after CAQM imposed GRAP 3 during the day when the air quality was hovering over 300. During the day, the panel said measures in stage III of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) have been implemented following “highly unfavourable meteorological conditions, including calm winds and very low mixing height”. Delhi’s 24-hour average air quality index, which was 379 at 4 pm, which breached the 400 mark around 10 pm.

Later in the evening, the panel said, “Considering the steep rise in the AQI of Delhi owing to highly unfavourable meteorological conditions and absolute calm wind conditions, the CAQM Sub-Committee on GRAP called for an emergency meeting.”

“The Sub-Committee decided to impose Stage-IV (‘Severe+’ Air Quality) of the  GRAP schedule (issued on 13.12.2024) in the entire NCR, with immediate effect,” they added.

What’s Allowed And What’s Not

• Stop entry of truck traffic into Delhi. Ban on construction and demolition activities for linear public projects such as highways, roads, flyovers, overbridges, power transmission, pipelines, telecommunication etc.
• The government can discontinue physical classes, including Classes Vl – lX and Class Xl.
• The government is to decide on allowing public, municipal and private offices to work on 50% strength and the rest to work from home.
• State governments may consider additional emergency measures like the closure of colleges/educational institutions and closure of non-emergency commercial activities, permitting the running of vehicles on the odd-even basis of registration numbers etc.
• Children, the elderly and those with respiratory, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, or other chronic diseases to avoid outdoor activities and stay indoors.
• Ban on all construction and demolition activities, including public projects such as highways and flyovers

Last month the air quality in Delhi and the surrounding areas was consistently in the ‘severe’ and ‘very poor’ category, prompting annual health warnings from medical professionals and triggering a rush of cases before the Supreme Court asking for directions to the government.

Over the past several weeks a top court bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Augustine George Masih have held several hearings on the annual air quality crisis, looking at issues from farm fires (i.e., farmers burning agricultural waste) to ineffective bans on polluting vehicles.

In some cases, the court criticised the authorities for not following the law; for example, when GRAP-IV was in effect, the court slammed officials continuing to allow non-essential construction activities that are not permitted at that time. The court also had questions for the Delhi government for not stopping vehicles carrying non-essential goods from entering the city.

The court also questioned the Delhi government and the CAQM, a central government panel, for not ordering stricter anti-pollution measures once the AQI had crossed the 300-mark.