A total of 11 cities in Karnataka have air quality worse than the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQ). A study has found that even if air pollution is reduced by 30% by 2024 as set by National Clean AIr Program (NCAP), seven cities including Bengaluru will still continue to breathe polluted air above the NAAQS even in 2024.
Other than Bengaluru, the other Karnataka cities that breathe air worse than NAAQ are Bidar, Tumakuru, Belgaum, Bijapur, Raichur, Devanagere, Hubbali, Mangaluru, Karwar and Kolar.
The findings were released by Greenpeace India as part its Airpocalypse III report on Tuesday, which identified 139 cities across India where air pollution levels exceed national standards but these were not included in the NCAP. In fact, only 12 of the 43 Smart Cities planned by the government comply with the NAAQ standards. This omission is due to the fact that the list of non-attainment cities in the NCAP was drawn together using data from the years 2011-2015.
Sunil Dahiya, Clean Air Campaigner, Greenpeace India, said, “Karnataka must step up against the air pollution snag and strive to bring each city under the permissible limit under NAAQS first and then move towards WHO guidelines.”
Launched on January 10, NCAP is a time-bound national level strategy of the central government to tackle the rising air pollution across India.
"The NCAP has used limited data from 2015, and as a result, has omitted a large number of highly polluted cities. We are calling on the MoEF&CC to update the list with 2017 data to reduce air pollution in as many highly polluted cities as possible, to make this as ‘national’ a programme as possible and help us move towards a Clean Air Nation," Dahiya added.