Sharmistha blames AAP, Centre for pollution woes

NEW DELHI: Slamming the AAP government in Delhi and the BJP government at Centre for the rising air pollution, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief spokesperson Sharmistha Mukherjee charged the two with not learning lessons from the past as a result of which 25 deaths were reported every day in the city due to respiratory and other lung diseases.

Ms Mukherjee said  the  pollution levels in Delhi  have  been going up for the past many years but the BJP government at the Centre and the AAP government in Delhi have not taken  any urgent steps nor implemented any action plan to tackle the problem. She demanded that both the governments should take steps on a war-footing to control the menace.

Addressing a press conference, Ms Mukherjee said that the major causes of pollution was due to internal reasons, as  transport and industries were  big contributing factors for the rise in the pollution levels.

She said that the fire at the Bhalswa landfill will also add to the woes while both the governments were indulging in blame-game.

Others present at the conference were senior leaders Chattar Singh and advocate Sunil Kumar, chairman of the Legal and Human Rights Department of the DPCC.

Contrary to the claims that stubble burning in the neighbouring states was a major source of pollution, Ms Mukherjee said it contributes only 11 per cent of the problem, and for which the BJP-ruled Haryana was a major culprit.

She said that in the last two years, the pollution due to stubble burning in Haryana came down only by 3.37 per cent while in the Congress-ruled Punjab,  pollution declined to 45.82 per cent as there were 80,814 instances of stubble burning in the state in 2016 which came down to 43,814 instances in 2017. On the other hand in Haryana, stubble burning instances in 2016 were 12,769 while in 2017, the number was 12,338 — a decline of 3.37 per cent.

She said stubble burning happens only for about 15-20 days.