Urban local bodies used over ₹7,000 crore to fight road dust, Lok Sabha told

URban local bodies feature used ₹7,094.39 crores to verify route dust, the unification environs ministry told the Lok Sabha on Monday.Out of 130 cities, 48 million-plus cities/ urban agglomerations are funded under the XVth Finance Commission Million-Plus City Challenge Fund as an air quality performance grant, and the remaining 82 cities are funded under the Control of Pollution Scheme of MoEFCC.“Till date, ₹13,852.22 crore has been released to 130 cities under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) as critical gap funding to implement air pollution mitigation measures. Funds under NCAP are released to each cities for implementing the City Action Plan, which includes measures to control road dust as one of the components. Accordingly, information submitted by respective ULBs have been reported on the PRANA portal, ₹7,094.39 crore has been utilized for measures for control of road dust,” union minister of state Kirti Vardhan Singh said in a written response.He was responding to questions by Shiv Sena MPs Eknath Shinde and Ravindra Waikar on three issues: the detailed data on the funds sanctioned and disbursed for controlling road dust pollution, whether there has been a percentage reduction in road dust levels after the implementation of mechanised sweeping and water-sprinkling measures and if so, the details thereof, and the details of the innovative technologies or materials introduced to prevent dust resuspension on busy roads and construction-heavy areas, particularly in Mumbai, Thane, Raigad and Pune districts, among others.Findings of source apportionment studies conducted in cities under NCAP have revealed road dust is the major contributor and accounts for 20-60% of PM10 concentrations, the response said.City action plans implemented under NCAP address road dust control, construction and demolition activities, open waste burning, vehicular pollution and industrial pollution. The focused actions by 130 cities under NCAP have shown positive results with 103 cities showing reduction in PM10 concentration in 2024-25 with respect to 2017-18, 64 cities have shown reduction in PM10 levels by more than 20% with respect to base year 2017-18 and 25 of these cities have achieved a reduction of more than 40%. A total of 22 cities have met NAAQS and have PM10 concentrations less than 60 µg/m3, the response said.HT had reported on July 20, 2024 that road dust mitigation has been the primary focus of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), which was launched in 2019 as the first such effort to set clean air targets for 131 polluted cities and to reduce particulate pollution nationally, with much lower funding for combustion sources that emit pollutants, a Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) assessment had found.