No PUC, no fuel; live monitoring at 1K sites: How Gurugram plans to breathe this winter

In a proactive move to combat declining air quality before winter arrives, Gurugram city administration unveiled a comprehensive suite of enforcement actions on Tuesday. The measures, approved during the 13th District Coordination Committee meeting and further reviewed by the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) Commissioner Pradeep Dahiya, aim to align with the Commission for Air Quality Management’s (CAQM) Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) to mitigate smog during colder months in the Delhi-NCR region.

Key enforcement measures include a ban on fuel sales to vehicles without a valid Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificate, as well as those that have reached the end of their statutory lifespan of 10 years for diesel and 15 years for petrol. The Regional Transport Authority and Food and Civil Supplies department have been instructed to issue binding orders to fuel retailers to enforce compliance. To monitor non-compliant vehicles, the city will employ extensive CCTV surveillance across all fuel stations.

To tackle dust and industrial emissions, the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) has placed 1,054 industrial sites over 500 square meters under direct electronic monitoring. This initiative features web cameras at 907 locations and low-cost air sensors at 534 sites, feeding data directly to monitoring dashboards managed by CAQM and HSPCB. Non-compliance with environmental standards will result in penalties and work stoppages for repeat offenders.

In anticipation of seasonal construction and demolition bans, Dhesi instructed engineering wings to complete ongoing projects before they enter effect. The civic body will also clear a 404.61-km road network for mechanized sweeping, deploying 24 sweeping machines to cover over 600 lane-kilometers nightly. Additionally, 40 water sprinklers and three truck-mounted and three tractor-mounted anti-smog guns are in place to suppress dust.

The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) identified 611 km of roads requiring redevelopment, while 1,480 km are in good condition. So far, 179.04 km of roads have met CAQM quality benchmarks, with 376.72 km slated for overhaul to eliminate dust and align with environmental standards. Tenders for 371.2 km of road work have been issued, with 335.24 km awarded for blacktopping, paving, and dust control measures ahead of the winter enforcement.

To address gaps in pollution data, the civic body aims to expand Gurugram’s Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) from three to eight by December. Concurrently, Phase 2 of the Integrated Traffic Management System (ITMS) is underway, featuring 2,722 cameras at 258 intersections, with 1,400 equipped with Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology to penalize traffic violations and alleviate congestion across 31 bottleneck hotspots.

These initiatives mirror the strategies adopted by the Delhi government over the past winters, leveraging technology for enforcement, such as drone surveillance, bio-decomposer solutions for stubble burning, and round-the-clock biomass burning patrols.