NEW DELHI: The much-touted red tape of the Haryana government came into play during the summer months that caused most weather stations in the state to go off radar at the peak of pollution, causing crucial loss of AQI data. An innocuous contractual lapse in May caused the crisis, as the government is taking too long to start the process of finding a new agency to manage the stations.
In 2020, the Haryana government had awarded a contract to the Indian arm of French company Envea for managing monitoring stations in the state for five years. An official at the Haryana State Pollution Control Board, who requested anonymity, attributed the outage to the lapsing of this contract. “Multiple monitoring stations in the state were shut for over six months till September,” the official said.
When the contract ended in May, all monitoring stations in the state went offline. The state Supplies and Disposals Department started the tendering process to issue a new contract only then. Though the process was not likely to finish soon, the issue became prolonged as no companies other than Envea India bid for the new contract.
Since May onwards were lean months for air pollution, the government took time till September to re-start the tendering process. “It is in the tendering stage, which will be followed by the valuation and financing stages,” the official said.
As pollution started rising from October and feeling the heat of media scrutiny for not being able to report AQI data, the Haryana government issued a temporary contract till Januray 2026 to Envea India. The government has also roped in another firm Axis Nano to manage several stations, including in Gurugram and Faridabad.
