Greenpeace asks government to immediately enforce National Clean Air Program

A green body, on March 20, 2018, protested outside the Badarpur power plant in Delhi, urging the government to enforce the National Clean Air Program (NCAP) by putting sector-wise plans, to achieve 35 per cent emission reduction in three years. Sunil Dahiya, senior campaigner, Greenpeace India said the fact that the current NCAP has hardly any mention on how big polluters should reduce their emissions, shows that the government was still not serious about big polluters like coal-fired power plants. “The government should make the NCAP immediately available to the public, with clear targets for reducing pollution from big polluters like power plants and industries,” he said. Greenpeace India said that its report ‘Airpocalypse II’ highlighted that the air quality of more than 80 per cent of the cities in the country was severely polluted, impacting 47 million children across the country. Also, 580 million people in India do not even have a single air quality monitoring station in the districts they live in, it said. The government has formulated the NCAP as a long-term and time-bound national level strategy, to tackle increasing air pollution in the country in a comprehensive manner.