NEW DELHI, October 2 — The Principal Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday issued binding directives to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), mandating preventive, time-bound enforcement of the revised Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) across the Delhi-National Capital Region ahead of the winter inversion and stubble burning cycle.
Under the judicially scrutinized protocol, emergency air-pollution mitigation responses are calibrated across four distinct stages anchored to the National Air Quality Index (AQI): Stage-I ('Poor' AQI 201–300), Stage-II ('Very Poor' AQI 301–400), Stage-III ('Severe' AQI 401–450), and Stage-IV ('Severe Plus' AQI >450). The Tribunal ordered that once regional forecasts project AQI breaching 400, stringent Stage-III prohibitions—including bans on non-essential construction, operation of stone crushers, and restrictions on BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel Light Motor Vehicles—must activate automatically without administrative vacillation.
The Tribunal further instructed the state chief secretaries of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan to monitor in-situ stubble management, ensuring full mobilization of Crop Residue Management (CRM) machineries, deployment of bio-decomposers, and verified 5 percent biomass pellet co-firing compliance across coal-fired thermal power plants.
The statutory architecture of the National Green Tribunal (constituted under the NGT Act 2010 pursuant to India's Rio 1992 commitments), the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas Act 2021, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981, and the eight criteria pollutants tracked under the National Air Quality Index (NAQI) are core topics across UPSC Civil Services (GS-III: Environmental Governance & Pollution) and State Pollution Board examinations.