Committee constituted to implement the National Clean Air Programme

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has constituted a committee chaired by Mr. Chandra Kishore Mishra, Secretary, to implement the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), which aims to reduce particulate matter (PM) pollution by 20%-30% in at least 102 cities by 2024.

• Other members of the committee are; the Joint Secretary (Thermal), Ministry of Power; Director-General, The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based think-tank; and Professor Sachidananda Tripathi, Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K).
• The clean air committee would be headquartered in New Delhi and its remit includes ensuring “inter-ministerial organisation and cooperation, sharing information and resolving issues that could arise between ministries.

About National Clean Air Programme

• The National Clean Air Programme, launched on January 10, 2019, is a time bound national level strategy for pan India implementation to tackle the increasing air pollution problem across the country in a comprehensive manner.
• It is based on collaborative and participatory approach involving relevant Central Ministries, State Governments, local bodies and other Stakeholders with focus on all sources of pollution forms the crux of the Programme.
• The tentative national level target of 20%–30% reduction of PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ concentration by 2024 is proposed under the NCAP taking 2017 as the base year for the comparison of concentration.
• 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 and strengthening the awareness and capacity building activities.
• The NCAP will be a mid-term, five-year action plan with 2019 as the first year.
• There will be use of the Smart Cities program to launch the NCAP in the 43 smart cities falling in the list of the 102 non-attainment cities. The NCAP is envisaged to be dynamic and will continue to evolve based on the additional scientific and technical information as they emerge.