No relaxation will be allowed for buildings on generator ban in Delhi. (Representational)
A Supreme Court-appointed pollution monitoring authority made it clear on Thursday that it will not allow any relaxation, except for essential services, in banning the use of electricity generators in Delhi-NCR and asked people to "question" their state governments if there is a power outage in residential areas.
The Delhi government has notified the Graded Response Action Plan to come into force from Thursday. Under GRAP, the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority enforces stricter anti-air pollution measures, including a ban on electricity generators, in Delhi and its satellite cities such as Gurugram, Ghaziabad and Noida.
"State governments have told us that they have been supplying electricity for 23.5 hours a day. Question them if there are outages. We have gone by their reports. There is no exemption for anybody, barring essential services," EPCA Chairman Bhure Lal told PTI.
Hundreds of housing societies in Delhi-NCR, which depend on gensets for backup, will be affected by the decision. There are also societies that completely depend on gensets as there's still no power connection.
EPCA member and Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment, an advocacy body, Sunita Narain said the EPCA was following the recommendations of the Central Pollution Control Board.
"There is no relaxation. CPCB gives recommendations," she said, refusing to say any more.
No one from the CPCB was available to comment.
The AAP government in Delhi on Wednesday banned the use of diesel gensets "till further orders", except for essential or emergency services, to control the deteriorating air quality. The essential services include healthcare facilities, elevators, railway services, Delhi Metro, airports and interstate bus terminals and the data centre run by the National Informatics Centre.
The DPCC has asked power companies to ensure an uninterrupted supply. THE EPCA has also asked the Delhi government to ensure a 24-hour electricity to residents.
A layer of smoky haze lingered over Delhi-NCR on Thursday as the air quality hit ''very poor'' levels. The city recorded an air quality index (AQI) of 315 at 11:10 am.
The 24-hour average AQI was 276 on Wednesday, which falls in the ''poor'' category. It was 300 on Tuesday, 261 on Monday, 216 on Sunday and 221 on Saturday.