AAP Alleges Delhi Government Tampered With Air Quality Data During Diwali

The Aam Aadmi Party on Monday accused the administration in Delhi of rigging air quality numbers by cutting the feed from pollution tracking units on Diwali night. Saurabh Bharadwaj, who leads the AAP in Delhi, questioned how anyone can trust an administration that plays with data during festivals, speaking through a video shared on social media platform X. During Deepavali night, residents burst firecrackers long after the 10 p.m. cutoff ordered by the Supreme Court, pushing PM2.5 concentrations in some areas to 66 times the safe limit set by the World Health Organization before levels slowly dropped on Monday morning. At the worst point of post-celebration pollution on Sunday night, numbers from multiple tracking units run by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee went missing for hours, leaving open the chance that the true peak was even higher. Bharadwaj stated that authorities are committing this fraud openly and criticized regulatory bodies like the Commission for Air Quality Management and the Central Pollution Control Board for staying quiet, claiming widespread complicity.

Context

Air quality monitoring networks use automated sensors to measure invisible particulate matter and other pollutants in real-time, making uninterrupted data crucial for public health warnings. When monitoring feeds fail or get disrupted during severe pollution events, citizens and doctors lose access to the accurate information needed to take necessary safety precautions.