New Delhi imposing new rules to fight extreme air pollution

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on Saturday welcomed the Delhi government’s decision to curb unbridled pollution in the national capital by plying odd and even number vehicles on alternate days in the city.

This rule is not applicable for Public vehicles or the vehicles coming outside of Delhi.

We wanted to build new rubber road and fix public transport.

Air pollution causes more than 600,000 premature deaths in India each year.

Vehicles with number plates ending with an odd number (1,3,5,7,9) can be driven one day while the next day those ending with an even number (0,2,4,6,8) can be taken out.

“Besides, Delhi Traffic Police has been asked to associate the committee to execute the government’s decision”, a senior government official said.

The Delhi High Court had pulled up the government earlier this week for lack of a time bound action plan to tackle the “alarming” levels of Delhi’s pollution and ordered it to submit one on January 21.

Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi Chief minister addressed at the 13th HT summit and said that he will win the Punjab polls this time.

The Delhi High Court had said the city had become a “gas chamber” while taking note of air quality monitoring data on the high amount of pollutants in the capital.

As a result, in 2014, New Delhi was named the world’s most polluted city by the World Health Organization, after it dethroned Beijing to gain the notorious distinction.

During the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing implemented a temporary “road space rationing” based on plate numbers for two months before a modified version of the restriction was made permanent in Beijing in October 2008 that now bans 20 percent of the vehicles on a given weekday.

Chief secretary K K Sharma said the government chose to shut down the Badarpur Thermal power station and will move the National Green Tribunal to close the Dadri power plant which falls in Uttar Pradesh.

For now, the Aam Aadmi Party authorities is sticking to January 1 because the goal date for the rollout although Kejriwal acknowledged plenty of groundwork was wanted. “Due to heavy smog, such a situation has emerged that people are being advised against going for exercise”, he said. “The easier way to curb pollution was to increase public transport for all routes, which would certainly prevent people from using private vehicles”, said Rajeev Snehi, a sales manager, who travels to Noida every day from south Delhi in his auto.

India has said poor countries can not be expected to make the shift away from cheap and abundant fossil fuels at the expense of struggling populations, many of whom do not even have access to electricity.