Question : National Clean Air Programme

(a) whether the Union Government has formulated National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) as a medium term national level strategy to tackle the increasing air problem across the country in a comprehensive manner;
(b) if so, whether the objectives of the NCAP is to augment and evolve effective ambient air quality monitoring network across the country besides ensuing comprehensive management plan for prevention, control and abatement of air pollution and if so, the extent to which it is helpful to reduce the air pollution across the country;
(c) the list of the cities where source apportionment studies will be conducted under the NCAP to combat air pollution across 100 cities in next 3 to 5 years;
(d) the names of the organizations/ institutions which are/will be involved in conducting the above-mentioned studies in aforesaid cities along with the list of the cities along with number of manual/ continuous air quality monitoring stations currently installed and to be installed;
(e) the time line for individual cities under which all such manual/continuous air quality monitoring stations will be installed; and
(f) the budgetary allocations made for all cities individually to conduct the source apportionment studies and to install manual/continuous air quality monitoring station under the programme?

Answer given by the minister

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT, FOREST AND CLIMATE CHANGE
(DR. MAHESH SHARMA)

(a) to (b) In order to address the increasing air pollution across the country in a comprehensive manner, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has finalized the National Clean Air Program (NCAP) as a pan India medium termfive-yearnational level strategy to tackle the increasing air pollution problem across the country.Overall objective of the NCAP is comprehensive mitigation actions for prevention, control and abatement of air pollution besides augmenting the air quality monitoring network across the country.Taking into account the available international experiences and national studies, 20-30% reduction of PM2.5 and PM10 concentration is targeted by 2024. This is keeping 2017 as the base year for comparison.

(c) The list of 102 non-attainment cities is at Annexure I.Source apportionment studies will be conducted in selected cities in a phased manner.

(d) Source apportionment studies in the selected cities will be conducted by expert technical agencies like IITs, CPCB etc. List of operating ambient air quality stations under National Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP) and Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) are enclosed at Annexure-II & III, respectively.

(e) Under the NCAP in the medium term in five years it is proposed to augment the manual monitoring stations and the CAAQMS stations.

(f) Budget to the amount of Rs 300 Cr has been approved for two years to begin with for implementation of various activities of NCAP.


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