While the overall air quality of Delhi plunged to the upper end of the ‘severe’ category on Friday, Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai has blamed BJP for the rise in air pollution in Delhi after Diwali. After the Delhi residents defied restrictions to burst firecrackers on the occasion of Diwali yesterday, the AAP MLA from Babarpur alleged that Bharatiya Janata Party instigated people to intentionally burst crackers on Diwali to cause air pollution in Delhi. “Some people in Delhi burst firecrackers on purpose. The BJP is behind this,” the minister said on Friday.
BJP के लोगों ने कल रात जानबूझकर पटाखें जलवाए जिसके कारण दिल्ली की यह दुर्दशा हुई : @AapKaGopalRai #DelhiPollution #DelhiAirPollution @amitpandayjourn pic.twitter.com/6rEEFGPIqJ
— News24 (@news24tvchannel) November 5, 2021
In an interview with News 24, when the anchor had asked Gopal Rai about his opinion on the rise of pollution in Delhi after Diwali, Rai said, “Definitely, for last five years we have experienced a better environment, clean air and low pollution level, but the way the pollution levels increased after last night, there are two factors. Firstly, I want to congratulate all those who have acted responsibly and have not burst crackers on Diwali. But I want to say this clearly that people from the Bharatiya Janta Party has intentionally encouraged people to burst of firecrackers that have resulted in the increase of pollution after last night.”
The AAP minister blaming BJP for encouraging people to burst firecrackers is bizarre, because the Delhi police under the central govt have been implementing Supreme Court orders on firecrackers, and have arrested several people caught with firecrackers. In fact, a large number of supporters of BJP have blamed it for taking sides with the activists in restricting and banning the use of firecrackers during Diwali.
However, Gopal Rai admitted that another factor that caused air pollution in Delhi is stubble burning, but refrained from labelling it the main factor. He said, ‘Second factor that caused the pollution to rise was because of rain, the harvesting of paddy in the neighbouring states was delayed. We have seen the data from NASA, before 31st October, there were fires in approximately 800 to 1000 places. But if you see last night picture, there were fires in approximately 3500 places due to stubble burning. The wind has also changed direction from east to west…’
Notably, according to the Fire Information for Resource Management System of NASA, the incident of fires in Punjab and Haryana have gone up significantly in the month of October, which had reached its peak last week.
NASA has used red dots to indicate incidents of fire caught by satellites. A look at the maps from 31st October and 5th November show that almost the entire state of Punjab was covered with red dots, which meant that crop residues were burnt at almost all the farmland in the state before Diwali. Similarly, a large portion of Haryana was also covered with such red dots indicating fire.
Reportedly, the share of stubble burning in air pollution in Delhi had reached 36% on Friday, the highest in the season so far. The wind direction has caused smoke from Punjab to move towards Delhi, and the local weather condition has meant that Delhi was covered with a thick layer of smog.
