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As the program is set to reach its deadline in less than two years, 43 of the 131 target cities have shown less than 20 percent improvement in PM10 concentration, while 31 cities have shown no improvement.
Additionally, the source apportionment study, which aims to identify sources of air pollutants and estimate their contribution to air pollution levels, was still under process in 80 of the 131 target cities and six cities were yet to complete their targets by October 2024. Hotspot action plan was not submitted. ,
Fund utilization was less than 40 percent in 12 cities.
“The problem of pollution cannot be solved by just spending money. There needs to be political will, which is clearly lacking,” said Nityanand Jayaram, a Chennai-based environmental writer and researcher. The Quint,
“If, despite being a performance-linked initiative, the program has large amounts of unutilized funds and fails to deliver significant results, it means that the implementation system is broken. In this case implementation rests largely on the State Pollution Control Boards. “Depends on who we are.” “We’ve known for a long time, they are understaffed and not accountable to anyone.”
While the program was initially aimed at curbing PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations to improve air quality in the target cities, only PM 10 concentrations are being considered for performance evaluation. The Environment Ministry, in one of its annual reports, had blamed the lack of monitoring stations for PM 2.5 for this.
“We can send rockets into space but not set up enough monitoring stations for PM 2.5 in 131 Indian cities? As I said, there is a clear lack of intention to solve the pollution problem,” Jayaram said.
PM 2.5 is a smaller subset of PM10 and poses a greater threat to health as it penetrates deep into the lungs, enters the bloodstream and affects almost all human organs.
