LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday defended the bursting of firecrackers on Diwali and dismissed concern about the pollution it leaves behind, saying it would subside on its own.
"So what if it has increased? It will subside as well. Why are you worried?" he said at a government programme in Lucknow where appointment letters were handed to lower division clerks.
The chief minister said his government had decided not to impose restrictions. "People celebrated Diwali with great enthusiasm and burst plenty of firecrackers. We had said that we would not impose any restrictions," he said, adding that he had himself been in the middle of the fireworks in Ayodhya.
He turned the criticism back on his critics, saying those who had "polluted the entire system through their corrupt deeds" were never questioned, while citizens who celebrated for a day were. "When something wrong happens, these people don't speak up, but when a festival is celebrated, they suddenly remember pollution," he said.
The remarks came as the capital's record on the festival was still being argued over. Delhi's air quality index stood at 376 on Diwali day, November 8, its most polluted Diwali in five years and the highest for the festival since 2021, when it was 382, according to Central Pollution Control Board data. It was 371 at 10 am the next morning, with 14 of the 51 stations reporting in the "severe" category.
Official data went missing at the worst of the spike. At 1 am on Monday, only 23 of Delhi's 59 monitoring stations were reporting PM2.5. When the Delhi Pollution Control Committee later released the absent hourly readings, every one of the 125 station-hour readings missing from the central board's records was above 1,000 micrograms per cubic metre against a 24-hour standard of 60; the highest reading available centrally for the night had been exactly 1,000, and Mundka recorded the night's highest at 3,744.
The Central Pollution Control Board has said the firecracker spike is left out of its 24-hour average, and Delhi's environment minister, Sirsa, has denied any manipulation of data.
Adityanath also used the Lucknow event to press his government's recruitment drive, saying 9.5 lakh appointment letters would be handed out by August 15, 2026, and another 1 lakh by January 26.
(With inputs from PTI and media reports)
Pioneer Digital Desk