Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said his Government will form a special task force to monitor implementation of a declaration signed during a climate summit at Copenhagen in Denmark.
Kejriwal participated in C40-climate summit at Copenhagen via video conferencing on Friday after the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) denied clearance to his visit for attending the mayor-level summit.
Addressing media persons at the C40-climate summit along with city leaders of the world’s megacities, Kejriwal launched the “Clean Air Cities Declaration” along with the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti, Lord Mayor of Copenhagen Frank Jensen, Mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau and Mayor of Portland Ted Wheeler.
“I will chair a Clean Air Task Force that will consist of Ministers and officials from various departments. We will together monitor Delhi’s progress in meeting our goals to make Delhi’s air clean,” he said.
“We have outlined several actions across various sectors in our ‘Clean Air Declaration’. We will undertake a large scale expansion in public transport by doubling our city bus fleet, inducting at least 1,000 fully electric buses, and encouraging the adoption of e-vehicles. The major source of Delhi’s pollution is dust and we have taken measures like covering the construction sites and other,” Kejriwal said.
The CM began his speech by sharing Delhi’s achievement in reducing pollution. He said, “I want to share some good news from Delhi. For the past few years, Delhi has been struggling because of poor air quality but it has been reduced by 25 per cent in last three years due to several steps taken in this regard.”
Sharing some of the steps Delhi took that led to the reduction in pollution, Kejriwal said, “We used a road rationing policy, odd even scheme, to reduce vehicular pollution on an emergency basis. We introduced several restrictions on diesel vehicles, and shut down all coal based thermal power plants in Delhi. City based industries were also incentivised through subsidies to switch over to cleaner fuels. We also created infrastructure to supply 24 hours uninterrupted power supply in the city, eliminating power cuts. This put half a million highly polluting diesel generators out of use,” said Kejriwal, adding that Delhi also has the largest network of Air Quality Monitoring stations in any city in India, which helps us take important decisions.
Addressing the session ‘Breathe Deeply’ at the summit, Kejriwal said there is an urgent need to introduce and implement concrete steps towards tackling the climate crisis in the world.
The CM also shared his experience of odd-even scheme with world leaders. He said, “The odd-even scheme is a road rationing policy. On odd dates like 1st, 3rd or 5th January, odd registration plate vehicles were allowed to ply and vice versa. With 50 per cent of all vehicles off the roads, pollution will definitely come down.”