Delhi-NCR on Monday night was covered with a toxic haze after it spurned the Supreme Court set limit for bursting firecrackers. The Air Quality Index (AQI) in the Capital, as a result, exploded to the severe category — 10 times higher than the level deemed healthy by the World Health Organisation — making it the most polluted city in the world. Delhi recorded its worst air quality on Diwali in four years, with pollution levels spiking sharply at night.
Delhi’s AQI stood at 359, in the ‘very poor’ category, at 11 am. It was 352 at 8 am, 346 at 5 am, 347 at 6 am and 451 at 7 am- as pollution levels worsened amid festive celebrations. Of the total 38 monitoring stations, 35 were in the ‘red zone’, indicating ‘very poor’ to ‘severe’ air quality. While 31 were in the ‘very poor’ category, four were in the ‘severe’ category, according to the CPCB’s SAMEER app, which provides real-time AQI data from monitoring stations.
The average PM2.5 concentration touched 488 micrograms per cubic metre in the 24 hours after Diwali, more than three times the pre-festival level of 156.6 micrograms per cubic metre. The data shows that in previous years, average PM2.5 levels rose from 163.1 to 454.5 in 2021, from 129.3 to 168 in 2022, from 92.9 to 319.7 in 2023 and from 204 to 220 in 2024. The high concentration of PM2.5 is due to local firecracker emissions across different parts of Delhi.
Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa, speaking a day after Diwali, highlighted the impact of firecrackers on the national capital’s air quality over the years and accused the AAP Government of forcing farmers to burn crop residue to send pollution levels up in the national capital.