November 9,2017:

Bench stated that,”What we are facing today has already been faced by London. They call it a Pea Soup Fog. It is a killer. The Stubble burning is visible villain in it, but there are other elephants in the room”.

As the killer fog continued to engulf Delhi NCR for the third consecutive day, on Thursday, Delhi High Court issued directions to improve the air quality, including watering of roads to minimise the dust.

Delhi HC’s Bench comprising of Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Sanjeev Sachdeva while calling the prevailing condition an “emergency situation” asked Delhi Government to consider option of “cloud seeding” to induce the rainfall artificially, as an immediate step to bring down dust and the particulate matter in atmosphere.

Court further directed Delhi Government to seriously consider the ban on further construction in city to the extent possible and implementing ‘odd-even’ vehicle usage scheme as a short term measure.

Delhi Government has today stated that it will impose odd-even car rationing scheme from November 13-17 to combat the deadly smog that’s blanketed Delhi NCR since Tuesday.

Pea soup, or the Pea Souper is also called black fog, killer fog or smog which is a very thick and often yellowish, greenish or blackish fog caused bythe air pollution that contains soot particulates and poisonous gas sulphur dioxide. Such a fog had engulfed London in 1952.

Delhi HC Bench issued directions to  Delhi Traffic Police to ensure that there is no vehicular congestion on roads and provide masks to personnel on duty.

Bench ordered Union Environment Secretary to hold a meeting in next three days of Chief Secretaries of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and UP to work out a joint short-term plan to bring down the air pollution.

Delhi HC has also taken on record steps proposed to be taken by Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) after a meeting held with LG yesterday.

Proposed steps include the quadrupling of the parking fees in the city, ban on the entry of the trucks except those carrying the essential commodities, prohibition on the construction activities, increasing services of Metro and DTC, cleaning of the roads, banning the brick-kilns and stopping use of the fire-wood and coal in the hotels.

 

Source - ptinews.com