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Govt committed to ensuring clear air for all: Environment Minister

Expressing satisfaction that the number of cities showing better air quality increased to 96 in 2020 from 86 cities in 2019, Yadav said that the air quality improvement efforts made in recent years have shown positive trends in achieving better air quality. However a lot needed to be done and the need of the hour was to address the issue of air pollution in a comprehensive manner with the coordination and collaboration of all stakeholders.

Govt committed to ensuring clear air for all: Environment Minister

(Photo: Twitter)

The government is committed to ensuring clean air to all citizens of the country for their healthy life, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said on Friday while emphasising that fighting air pollution ought to become a mass movement in the coming years.

Speaking at the first meeting of the National Apex Committee under National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), he stated that since different cities have different sets of factors contributing to air pollution in that region, focusing on the airshed was important.

Expressing satisfaction that the number of cities showing better air quality increased to 96 in 2020 from 86 cities in 2019, Yadav said that the air quality improvement efforts made in recent years have shown positive trends in achieving better air quality. However, a lot needed to be done and the need of the hour was to address the issue of air pollution in a comprehensive manner with the coordination and collaboration of all stakeholders.

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The NCAP launched in 2019 is today being implemented in targeted 132 cities, non-conforming to national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) consecutively for five years.

NCAP has a focus on enhancement of technical and scientific knowledge as well. A National Knowledge Network (NKN) has been constituted with a group of experts from different reputed academic/research institutes of the country. These institutes will help the state and city level administrations in strategising and taking measures to tackle air pollution at local levels in a scientific, effective and efficient manner.

The Ministry also launched recently a national portal for NCAP “PRANA” -the Portal for Regulation of Air Pollution in Non-Attainment Cities which provides all information related to various policies / programmes /schemes/activities of the stakeholders along with the progress made towards improvement in air quality across the country. This portal will be a platform for monitoring and feedback on all efforts made for air quality improvement.

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