New Delhi, Jan 11 (UNI) The Congress on Sunday mounted a sharp attack on the Modi government over India’s worsening air quality crisis, citing a new independent analysis that found nearly half of the country’s cities suffering from chronic air pollution and accused the Centre of responding with what it called an “exceedingly ineffective and inadequate” policy framework.
In a statement, Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said a fresh analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) had confirmed that air pollution in India is no longer a regional or seasonal problem but a “nationwide, structural crisis” that the government has failed to address meaningfully.
“Using satellite data, the study found that nearly 44 per cent of Indian cities—1,787 out of 4,041 statutory towns assessed—have chronic air pollution, with annual PM2.5 levels consistently exceeding the national standard over five years,” Ramesh said, referring to the period from 2019 to 2024, excluding the pandemic year 2020.
Taking aim at the Centre’s flagship National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), the Congress leader said the scheme covered only a fraction of the problem. “Despite the scale of the crisis, only 130 cities are covered under the NCAP. In effect, the programme currently addresses just about 4 per cent of India’s chronically polluted cities,” he said.
Ramesh pointed out that even among the 130 NCAP cities, implementation gaps remained glaring. “Twenty-eight cities still do not have continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations. Of the 102 cities with monitoring infrastructure, as many as 100 reported PM10 levels of 80 per cent or higher,” he said, calling the programme deeply flawed in design and execution.
Describing NCAP as a misnomer, Ramesh remarked, “NCAP, propagated as the National Clean Air Programme, has actually become a ‘Notional Clean Air Programme’. It urgently needs a thorough overhaul and reform.”
The Congress outlined a series of demands, beginning with official acknowledgement of air pollution as a public health emergency. Ramesh said India must comprehensively revamp the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, and the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) notified in 2009. He contrasted India’s permissible PM2.5 limits—60 micrograms per cubic metre for a 24-hour period and 40 annually—with the World Health Organization’s far stricter guidelines of 15 and 5 micrograms, respectively.
On funding, Ramesh said the current allocation—about Rs 10,500 crore, including NCAP funds and 15th Finance Commission grants, spread across 131 cities—was grossly inadequate. “Our cities need 10 to 20 times more funding. NCAP must be made at least a Rs 25,000-crore programme and expanded to cover the 1,000 most polluted towns in the country,” he said.
The Congress also demanded that PM2.5 levels be adopted as the primary performance yardstick, and that the programme focus squarely on major pollution sources such as solid fuel burning, vehicular emissions and industrial pollution. It further called for giving NCAP legal backing, a robust enforcement mechanism and comprehensive data monitoring for every Indian city, rather than limiting action to so-called ‘non-attainment’ cities.
Ramesh also pressed for immediate enforcement of emission norms for coal-fired power plants. “All power plants must install Flue Gas Desulphurisation systems by the end of 2026,” he said, adding that the independence of the National Green Tribunal must be restored and what he termed “anti-people environmental law amendments” of the past decade rolled back.
Accusing the government of minimising the health impacts of polluted air, Ramesh said the Parliament had witnessed repeated attempts to underplay the crisis. “Twice so far—in July 2024 and December 2025—the Modi government has tried to downplay the health impact of air pollution. The government is not blind to the truth; it is only attempting to cover up the scale of its incompetence and negligence,” he alleged.
Air pollution remains one of India’s most pressing environmental and public health challenges, with multiple studies linking prolonged exposure to fine particulate matter to respiratory, cardiovascular and other serious health conditions. The Congress said the CREA findings should serve as a wake-up call for urgent, large-scale policy action rather than incremental measures.
