Delhi recorded the highest PM 10 (particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometers) levels among the 130 cities covered under the Centre’s flagship National Clean Air Programme in the financial year 2024-25, a new analysis by non-profit Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) revealed. The national capital was followed by Byrnihat in Assam and Patna in Bihar.
Delhi recorded an annual average PM 10 concentration of 206 micrograms/cubic metre (µg/m3), while Byrinhat and Patna’s annual PM 10 levels were 200 µg/m3 and 180 µg/m3, respectively.
Cities covered under the clean air programme have been given the target to reduce levels of inhalable PM 10 pollutants by up to 40% or achieve national ambient air quality standards by 2025-26, over the 2017 baseline year. The NCAP evaluates PM 10 reductions on a financial year basis.
Even as Delhi’s PM 10 levels were three times above the national ambient air quality standards (60 µg/m3 for annual period), the national capital recorded a 15% decline in PM 10 concentration compared to the NCAP’s baseline year of 2017-18, the analysis added.
CREA also analysed the improvements and rise in PM 10 levels across NCAP-covered cities. “When benchmarked against the NCAP baseline year (2017-18), PM 10 levels increased in 23 cities and remained unchanged in two. The remaining 77 showed improvements,” the analysis stated.
Twenty-one cities showed over 40% improvements in PM10 levels with respect to the NCAP baseline year of 2017-18. Of these 21, 10 cities were from Uttar Pradesh — Bareilly, Varanasi, Firozabad, Agra, Moradabad, Prayagraj, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ghaziabad and Jhansi — while there were two cities each from Uttarakhand and Punjab, and one each from Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Nagaland, Maharashtra, and West Bengal, according to the analysis.
Among cities that saw a rise in PM 10 levels were five each in Maharashtra and Odisha, followed by four in Assam, three in Madhya Pradesh, and two each in Bihar, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh.
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“Bareilly (Uttar Pradesh) reported the largest reduction in PM 10 levels at 78% compared to 2017–18, while Jalgaon (Maharashtra) recorded the highest increase at 57%,” according to the analysis.
“A few Indian cities have shown notable improvement in reducing PM 10 levels, but the majority remain far from meeting the NCAP targets — with just one year left to the deadline. Despite some progress, 91 of the 102 NCAP cities with CAAQMS (continuous ambient air quality monitoring system) data continued to exceed the lenient national annual PM 10 standard during FY 2024-25,” said Manoj Kumar, an analyst at CREA.
Under NCAP, 48 cities with a million plus population are funded under the 15th Finance Commission’s million-plus city challenge fund, and 82 cities are funded directly by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The Centre had allocated Rs 19,807.6 crore for the 2019-20 to 2025-26 period, as a performance-based incentive grant for achieving the air-pollution reductions.