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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

08/10/22 07:01 AM IST

Delhi’s air quality is now poor, GRAP measures enforced

In News 
  • Measures under ‘stage-1’ of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) will be enforced in the national capital region with immediate effect.
GRAP 
  • A graded Response Action Plan is a set of emergency measures that kick in to prevent further deterioration of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold.
  • It is based on a plan that was submitted by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in November 2016. The GRAP was first notified in January 2017 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
  • Stage 1 of GRAP is activated when the AQI is in the ‘poor’ category (201 to 300), and On Wednesday, for instance, the AQI in Delhi was 211.
  • The second, third and fourth stages will be activated three days ahead of the AQI reaching the ‘very poor’ category (301 to 400), ‘severe’ category (401 to 450) and ‘severe +’ category (above 450).
  •  In the version of the GRAP 2017, measures kicked in after pollution concentrations reached a certain level.
  • This year, measures are pre-emptive and will kick in based on forecasts in an attempt to prevent the AQI from deteriorating further.
  • The older version of the GRAP was enforced based only on the concentration of 5 and PM10.
  • This year, GRAP is being enforced based on the AQI, which takes other pollutants also into accounts, such as ozone, sulphur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen.
Measures this year 
  • For the first time, it specifies that State governments in the NCR may impose restrictions on BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel four-wheelers under Stage-3 (severe category).
  • Restrictions on some construction activities will also be set in earlier in the revised GRAP, i.e in the ‘severe category’ stage instead of “severe +” compared to earlier.
  • Construction activities on linear public projects like highways, roads, flyovers, pipelines and power transmission, will be banned under the ‘severe +’ category this year.
  • Also under the ‘severe +’ category, State governments may consider additional emergency measures like the closure of schools, plying of vehicles on an odd-even basis etc.
Source- Indian Express 

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