Air pollution prompts Indian lawmakers to urge national emergency declaration

Toxic air remains a persistent issue in India’s Delhi region and its suburbs, particularly during the winter months. For weeks, Delhi’s Air Quality Index (AQI) – which tracks various pollutants, including PM2.5, a fine particulate matter capable of clogging lungs – has registered more than 20 times the limit advised by the World Health Organization.

The city’s average AQI has surpassed the “severe” 400 level multiple times over the past decade, especially in winter – a threshold that can endanger even healthy individuals and pose major risks to those with pre-existing conditions. On December 3, Delhi’s average AQI hovered around 380, according to the government-supported Safar app.

The crisis has no single source, but is driven by a combination of factors including industrial emissions, vehicle pollution, falling temperatures, weak winds, and the seasonal burning of crop stubble in neighbouring states, pushing pollution among the world’s highest, as noted in an article by British publication The Independent.

Fresh data indicates that more than 200,000 cases of acute respiratory illness were documented in six state-run hospitals across the Delhi metropolitan area between 2022 and 2024, as the Indian capital grappled with worsening pollution levels, the federal government reported, adding that over 30,000 patients required hospitalisation during this period.

In recent years, India’s highest court has repeatedly voiced concerns over air quality in Delhi and its surrounding regions.

India’s opposition legislators staged a protest in parliament on December 4, demanding that Delhi’s toxic air, which exposes the capital’s 30 million residents to serious respiratory risks, be declared a national emergency.

As air quality across India’s northern plains plunged to “severe levels” in recent weeks, public demonstrations continued, while opposition MPs raised the issue in parliament. Vijay Kumar, a Congress MP representing southern Kanyakumari, introduced an adjournment motion in the lower house (Lok Sabha) to seek an urgent debate on air pollution. Adjournment motions are used to draw the House’s attention to issues of immediate public significance.

“Delhi has turned into an open air gas chamber, with crores breathing toxic air that is harming every organ of the body and causing long term illness, even in children and young adults,” he said.

Each year, emissions from vehicles and the customary burning of agricultural residue in nearby farming states such as Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh combine with the arrival of winter, when colder temperatures and stagnant air trap pollutants close to the surface, creating dangerous air quality across the region.

New Delhi, together with its wider metropolitan zone, routinely ranks among the most polluted cities globally during winter. Pollution typically reaches peak levels around the Diwali celebrations in October, when smoke from millions of fireworks aligns with crop-burning emissions and weather conditions that prevent pollutants from dispersing. This year, however, AQI levels continued climbing even after the holiday.

By Nazrin Sadigova