Despite policies measures such as EV policies, metro network, BS-VI fuel, scrapping vehicles older than 15 years etc, to control vehicular emissions in cities like Delhi, the national capital has not been able to meet CPCB’s annual NO2 average even once since 2013.And unfortunately, Delhi is not the only city in northwest India with this dubious distinction as an analysis of the trends for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) for three states in northwest India – Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan – breached the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) safety limits in November 2021.An analysis by NCAP Tracker, an air pollution policy tracking platform, has shown that between 2013 and 2020, Delhi hasn’t experienced a single year where NO2 annual average was within safety limits even as despite the nationwide lockdown in 2020, Delhi’s annual NO2 average for the year remained at 61 micrograms per metre cubed.Emerging as a new cause of worry, NO2 levels were 73.66 and 71 in 2018 and 2019 respectively, showed the analysis that did a deep dive into the non-attainment cities in all three states, CAAQMS monitoring sites, annual NO2 trends, number of days when daily NO2 averages were breached at each monitoring site, along with an analysis for the trends, a statement from Climate Trends, an advocacy think tank, that has launched the NCAP tracker platform, said.
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