NEW DELHI: Bahadurgarh Sonipat and Jhajjar are now on Central Pollution Control Board’s radar as, according to officials, the focus is shifting from bigger cities in the national capital region ( NCR ) — Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad — to the smaller towns.“We have received feedback about high pollution activities in these towns. Of course, that is impacting Delhi air, too. So after our initial focus on the big cities, we are also looking at smaller towns,” a senior CPCB official said.In a recent Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) task force meeting, the authorities were asked to keep an eye on construction and demolition activities, open dumping and burning of municipal solid waste, and traffic congestion in these Haryana towns.CPCB member-secretary Prashant Gargava, who chaired the meeting, said there had been feedback from these places regarding a lot of dust generating activities. “We have asked the district magistrates to look into it and take necessary steps,” he said.According to a recent study by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), says 36% of the pollution has its source in Delhi itself, 34% in the rest of NCR while 30% comes from across international borders. At least 74% ultrafine particles (PM2.5) in Delhi’s air come from outside the city during summer, the study stated. They come from NCR towns located further north or west of Delhi and beyond even from as far as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Oman.CPCB has recently put up a list of NCR hotspots. These are Anand Vihar, Bawana, CRRI Mathura Road, DTU, Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range, Dwarka Sector 8, Jahangirpuri, Mundka, NSIT Dwarka, Narela, Okhla Phase-2, RK Puram, Rohini, Shadipur and Wazirpur in Delhi. In the rest of NCR, these areas are Sector 16A in Faridabad, Vikas Sadan in Gurugram, Vasundhara in Ghaziabad, Knowledge Park-III in Greater Noida, Sector 125 in Noida and RIICO Industrial Area III in Rajsthan’s Bhiwadi.The authorities are taking specific actions in these areas to control polluting activities. During a meeting called by the lieutenant governor of Delhi last week, all agencies were instructed to ask their field officers to visit hotspots and come down heavily on polluting activities.The LG also directed night patrolling by team of representatives from corporations, revenue department, Delhi Pollution Control Committee and asked the agencies to analyse the findings to take action against any fire incident.

Stay updated with all the Latest Faridabad headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.