NEW DELHI: The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Wednesday failed to present a concrete strategy to tackle rising air pollution, even as the city government led by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta faces mounting political heat over deteriorating air quality.
At a meeting of the Standing Committee, the civic body appeared unprepared, with officials unable to respond to basic questions raised by councillors across party lines.
Ruling party councillor and Standing Committee member Sundar Singh opened the session by demanding written replies on the MCD’s pollution-control measures.
Officials claimed the responses would be submitted “in the coming days”, prompting Singh to allege deliberate delays by the bureaucracy to evade accountability. He criticised the officials for not offering even verbal explanations during a crisis that demands urgent action. Another ruling party councillor, Jagmohan Mehlawat, questioned the officials about the budget allocated by departments responsible for pollution mitigation. However, no one from the DEMS (Department of Environmental Management and Services) department — tasked with engineering, sanitation and technical functions — came forward to address the query.
BJP councillor Rajpal Singh also criticised the bureaucratic wing for failing to curb pollution during winter, stressing the need for fixing accountability of officials who were not active on the ground.
AAP councillor and Standing Committee member Praveen Kumar accused the ruling party of failing to control pollution, claiming the situation had worsened to the point that people were considering moving out of Delhi. “Every third person is affected by respiratory diseases. There is no concrete plan on the ground to control pollution,” he said. Another AAP member Rafia Mahir also slammed the MCD for “inaction”, saying officials rarely provided appropriate responses when questioned on pollution-related issues.
Sources in the Delhi government indicated growing dissatisfaction with the MCD’s performance. After a review meeting on November 11, the government concluded that the civic body was underperforming in key areas of pollution control. The chief minister and her cabinet have now decided to monitor cleanliness and pollution-control measures directly at the ground level.
According to sources, the government found gaps in MCD’s functioning — dust-control machines were not running at full capacity, garbage collection was delayed in several wards and road-washing operations remained largely non-functional.