CHANDIGARH: All 29 air quality monitoring stations in Haryana operated by the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) have been offline since April 2 this year due to the previous maintenance contract having lapsed.
The pollution data is now coming from only two stations of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) -- one in Gurugram and the other in Panchkula. The state pollution board said it's actively working to finalise the tender process for a new maintenance contract for air quality monitoring stations in the coming weeks.
Sources said the contract of the firm maintaining these monitoring stations in the state for five years had lapsed last year. Since October 31, 2024, these stations started going offline and by December 31, about 50 per cent of them stopped recording pollution data used by the HSPCB and Central Pollution Control Board to issue daily pollution bulletins and by the CAQM to formulate strategies for bad-air days. By April 2, the whole network went down.
Member Secretary of HSPCB Pradeep Dagar assured that both manual and automated stations would continue to provide crucial data once the contract is finalised. "The tender process is on and we are expecting it will be finalized in the coming weeks," he said.
The board is aiming to complete this process before pollution levels rise in October-November this year.
Sources pointed out that a tender was floated in May this year to appoint a firm to monitor these stations but only one bidder came forward. Thus the bid was automatically disqualified since according to government rules, at least two bids have to be made for a competitive selection.
Now, tenders will again be called by the board in the coming days with a deadline of late August. After the board gets the bids, there is a lengthy evaluation process which takes around two to three months as a technical scrutiny will be done followed by a financial review. Then the bid will be cleared by a high-powered committee and finally approved by the chief minister’s office.
"The process took some time. A single bid is not enough under the rules. So, we have floated a tender. The process is on and we are holding a pre-bid meeting in which conditions will be discussed and thereafter the matter will be approved by the high-powered committee," said Dagar.
It is learnt that under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) and the state-specific pollution control action plans, the government has to track, report and demonstrate year-on-year improvements in air quality.
If the board is unable to finalise the tender process in the coming months, it will hit the collection of real-time AQI data in the peak smog season.
