Cabinet Secretary to monitor air crisis daily with states

New Delhi: With a public health emergency declared in the national capital and regions surrounding it due to severe air pollution, the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday asked the chief secretaries of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana to monitor the situation in districts under their jurisdiction on a 24x7 basis.

Official sources said principal secretary to PM P.K. Mishra reviewed the situation arising out of the severe air pollution in the national capital region (NCR) and other parts of North India. Senior officials from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi joined the meeting through video conferencing.

Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba will monitor the situation with these states on a daily basis, it was decided in the meeting, sources added. Owing to the deteriorating weather conditions in the national capital, schools — private as well as government as well as government aided — have been ordered shut till November 5 by the Delhi government.

The Haryana and Uttar Pradesh governments too have followed suit and ordered the closure of all schools in Gurgaon/Faridabad and Noida/Ghaziabad districts.

The chief secretaries of Punjab and Haryana are said to have informed the PMO during the meeting that they had spent around Rs 2,500 crores each for purchasing happy seeder machines (alternative given to farmers to discourage them from burning crop residue, due to which the pollution levels in Delhi-NCR deteriorate annually in the November-December period).