Delhi Pollution Crisis | We have mechanisms but no will to address issues, says Supreme Court

Yesterday, a Division Bench of Justices A.S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan assembled for yet another hearing on the Delhi-NCR pollution crisis. They received updates on the pollution and solid waste governance in the National Capital Region. 

The Court diagnosed the systemic neglect and vacancies in several governing bodies. The judges also questioned the crumbling architecture of the pollution regulation framework in the NCR. 

Senior Advocate Aparajita Singh, the amicus curiae, detailed the dire situation: critical posts at pollution control boards are vacant, funds remain unspent, grievance redressal systems are dysfunctional and statutory bodies lack expertise. 

“The mechanism is there. The problem is the monitoring—and the will to actually do something,” Singh told the Court, summing up the state of environmental governance in a single sentence.

The story of the pollution boards

Singh began by explaining the institutional hierarchy under the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, highlighting the proliferation of authorities. 

Singh mapped the verticals: “At the national level, it is the Ministry of Environment under the chairmanship of the Minister of Environment. At the state level, we have Chief Secretaries. At the city level, we have District Collectors. And then we have the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and state pollution control boards.”

When Justice Oka asked how many agencies were operational in Delhi alone, Singh listed the CAQM, CPCB, state pollution control boards and district-level committees.

“Out of 603 sanctioned posts in the CPCB, 134 are vacant,” Singh revealed. The problem extends to state boards as well. “They are understaffed. And worse, the workload has gone up.”

Justice Oka noted the same, “So they have money but they are not spending it?” Singh nodded. “Yes. We have suggested that the government exercise significant control over the expenditure priorities. This is the most neglected department… There are strong ministries that don’t even respond to the queries.”

To further complicate matters, Delhi, the epicentre of India’s pollution crisis, has only used 30 percent of the funds sanctioned under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) since 2019.

Where are the experts?

Citing an internal study, Singh stated that in 2009-10, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) had granted 3,224 environmental consents with 184 staffers. But in 2021, it granted 11,698 consents with just 343 sanctioned staff, many of whom are on short-term contracts.

Singh informed the Court that many of them are frequently transferred. In certain instances, member secretaries in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have served for as little as fifteen days. 

She recommended that officers be appointed full-time and not transferred before completing their prescribed three-year tenure. “How do we expect them to perform? Everyone is starting a new innings. This is not a priority department for most governments—it becomes one only when this Court intervenes,” she remarked.

Singh also flagged that the Air Act mandates that at least two members must possess special knowledge or practical experience in air quality matters. “Without expertise, it is very difficult for them to come up with a coherent plan,” she said. However, she pointed out that this was not done, calling for a significant expansion of expert representation on pollution boards to meet the statutory mandate and increase expert representation on boards.

Moving from opaque to transparent redressal

Singh further brought the attention of the Court to the lack of transparency in grievance redressal mechanisms. More specifically, she mentioned the Sameer App, meant to be a citizen grievance redressal platform launched by CPCB, frequently crashes due to overload. She also noted that other online portals launched by the CPCB’s neither user-friendly nor transparent. “It is an opaque system. Data should be publicly accessible,” she said, and further stressed the importance of citizen engagement.

Moreover, she highlighted that the language used by redressal forums was vague. “The implementing agency ‘may’ mark the complaint as completed,” she said, adding that the permissive tone was a license for inaction instead of being mandated to do so. “My problem is with the word ‘may’. We know how authorities work. It must be changed to ‘shall’,” she submitted.

ASG Aishwarya Bhati, representing the Union, assured the Court, “The intention was not that. We’ll change it to ‘shall’. An order may not be necessary.

Taking note of Singh’s exhaustive suggestions, the Court issued a slew of directions:

• CAQM to prepare quarterly enforcement reports under the Air Act and EP Act and submit them to the Court
• A real-time online portal for air quality data in NCR to be operationalised within a month
• Status of vacancies to be reported by 30 April 2025
• NCR states and Delhi to respond to these suggestions in the week commencing 5 May 2025

From polluted air to piling waste

The Court then pivoted to solid waste management. Singh presented a status report by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which claims to do 58 percent of the waste segregation at source. The report aims to achieve 100 percent segregation by January 2027. Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy, appearing for MCD, affirmed the figures.

The Court directed all NCR states and MCD to appoint high-ranking nodal officers to supervise waste collection and segregation. These officers must file quarterly compliance reports beginning 1 September 2025. The Court also directed that wide publicity be given to the Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 through massive awareness campaigns. Non-compliance, the Court said, would attract penalties. It further directed MCD to commission the Sultanpur Dabas landfill in Delhi ahead of its current 2030 deadline.

“Unless proper publicity is given to the 2016 SWM rules and penalties are enforced, they cannot be effectively implemented,” Justice Oka said. Singh also proposed that the GST on recycled construction materials be reduced to zero to incentivise a circular waste economy. The Court agreed and asked the Union to place the suggestion before the appropriate authority.

The energy plant conundrum

Singh raised concern that waste-to-energy plants, which had a pollution index of 97.6, qualified to be in the “red” category. Yet, they’ve been placed in a newly created “blue” category. “What is the rationale behind this? This new nomenclature doesn’t make sense,” Singh said bluntly. ASG Bhati sought a month’s time to seek clarification from the CPCB. The Court granted the extension.

Singh’s final appeal was that the matters be expedited and relisted at the earliest. The Court agreed. But whether this hearing sparks real systemic reform—or merely adds another chapter to the 40-year-old litigation—remains to be seen. 

For now, though the air is not clean yet, the Supreme Court appears to have done what it can to lift the fog of accountability: identified the problems and issued directions.