Chandigarh continues to breathe good quality air

CHANDIGARH: With the city in a lockdown mode, the air quality continues to remain good. Chandigarh, which had recorded cleanest air in the country on March 28, witnessed good air quality on the first two days of April.
The air quality index (AQI) on April 1 and 2 ranged between 26 and 33, which falls under the good category. Chandigarh Pollution Control Committee (CPCC) member secretary TC Nautiyal said as there was no vehicular movement in the city, the air quality was likely to remain good till April 14.
On Diwali in 2019, the city's AQI was 371 in Sector 22; 280 in the silence zone of Sector 12; 247 in the commercial area of Sector 17; and 352 in the institutional zone of Sector 39. The UT administration had floated a tender to conduct a source appointment study of the proportion of various pollutants in the air. A senior UT official said, “The Central government has sanctioned Rs 10 crore under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), of which Rs 80 lakh will be for the study.”
The continuous ambient air quality monitoring station (CAAQMS) on the Panjab University campus in Sector 25 records real-time monitoring data every hour. At present, the UT does not have data to quantify air pollutants. In 2018, the administration rejected the study proposal because of high cost. In 2017, the environment department had a meeting with the Union environment ministry, where it came out that IIT, Kanpur, had procured Swiss-made monitoring devices worth Rs 5 crore each for the study in four cities.