Smog chokes Delhi, 1,700 schools closed

“The order for closure is only for Saturday as of now. As per the situation, we may decide to close them later as well,” Leader of Opposition in SDMC, Subhash Arya said. About 10 lakh students are enrolled in the schools administered by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC). The decision was taken on Friday at a meeting of civic officials held in the wake of severe pollution Delhi is reeling under. Recently, the National Green Tribunal had pulled up the Centre and AAP government for ‘shifting blame’ and not taking steps to tackle the alarming air pollution level in Delhi, saying what a ‘terrible’ future are we giving to our children. 

The national capital was facing the worst smog in 17 years, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) had said on Thursday, while asking the Delhi government to issue health alerts and convey that children should stay indoors as there was a state of health emergency due to peaking air pollution. Peak level of respirable pollutants PM 2.5 and PM 10 had also violated the safe limits by over 15 times at places like RK Puram. The prescribed standard of PM 2.5 is 60 micrograms per cubic metre, but it touched 955 in real-time during early morning hours. 

Admitting that the enforcement of rules for tackling air pollution was ‘weak’, the Environment Ministry on Friday had asked states to ‘strictly’ implement a host of measures, including checking spread of fly ash from Delhi’s Badarpur plant and shutting down old brick kilns.