The Congress on Monday slammed both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for doing precious little to check Delhi’s air pollution.

On the morning when people in the national capital woke to a blanket of smog, the Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that the BJP and AAP are shadowboxing and busy with scoring political points while people of Delhi are suffering.

“The BJP and Aam Aadmi Party are only interested in scoring political points and one-upmanship. We saw the physical violence yesterday, while an iconic Congress-conceptualised bridge was being inaugurated in Delhi. We saw the sheer blame game on pollution last year. We have been witnessing how both parties indulge in hollow rhetoric without concrete action against air pollution,” Singhvi said.

“It is because of this that Delhi, which was rated as the Greenest Capital in 2013, is the most polluted mega city in just five years,” he added.

Singhvi said that the people of Delhi have fed up with both the BJP and the AAP who are “only interested in short term piecemeal measures instead of taking concrete long term effective measures” against pollution.

The Congress leader also criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his silence on Varanasi being labelled one of the most polluted cities in the world.

“Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi who creates much hype and hoopla over ‘Swachh Bhrarat Mission’- is absolutely silent on the fact that Varanasi, his constituency along with Delhi, Agra, Lucknow and Kanpur are now amongst the most polluted cities in the world,” he said.

Singhvi said that the Congress government in Delhi led by Sheila Dikshit had transformed the city into the Greenest Capital in the World in 2013.

“Compare and contrast this with the present situation, where Delhi is now the most polluted cities in world now,” he said.

Drawing attention to today’s smog, Singhvi said that there is a “virtual atmospheric emergency in Delhi-NCR”

“There was a spectacular increase in PM2.5 pollution in Delhi over the past few hours. At 6 am morning, PM2.5 was 945 µg/m3, much higher than the WHO prescribed norms of 25 µg/m3,” he said.

But, Singhvi said, both Modi government and AAP government were forced to take some temporary measures because of the intervention of Supreme Court of India.

He said that while the Congress-UPA had implemented the construction of Peripheral Expressways around Delhi, it took much nudging by the Congress party for the Modi government to complete one Eastern Expressway in 4.5 years.

Citing that trucks are a major source of vehicular pollution, Singhvi said that railways should be roped in to strengthen freight movement and mandis should be connected to railways.

The Congress said that work on the construction of the Phase 4 of the Metro project should begin and coal-based power plants should be made to comply with pollution norms and buy electricity from gas-based power plants.