New Delhi: The city’s emergency plan to fight ‘poor’ to ‘severe’ levels of air pollution was rolled out on Monday, starting with a ban on diesel generator (DG) sets in the national capital.

Delhi’s biggest coal power plant at Badarpur has been ordered to be permanently closed from Monday  and the roads will be swept with special machines as part of a set of emergency measures that have been put in place by the government to combat air pollution, authorities said

The plan came into force even as Delhi already encountered 9 days of ‘poor’ air quality in the first two weeks of October.

The Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), which was notified by environment ministry and launched in Delhi last year to combat different levels of pollution, has an advisory for each category of air pollution — emergency, severe, very poor, poor, and moderate.

On Monday, as the air quality remained in the ‘poor’ category but deteriorated compared to Sunday, measures like mechanised sweeping of roads, pollution control measures at brick kilns, and deployment of traffic police to ensure smooth passage of traffic at vulnerable areas in Delhi-NCR region came into force, authorities said.

Use of gensets have been banned but will not be banned in NCR because of power supply situation in the area, said Anumita Roychowdhury, a member of the Enviro-nment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority.