‘Green budget’: Govt tells depts to ready suggestions for check pollution

NEW DELHI: In a bid to tackle the city’s air pollution, the Delhi government is planning a green budget for the financial year 2018-19. It has asked various departments to ‘come up with a range of interventions that can be implemented’ by looking at six studies published in the last two-three years.

In a note to the environment, transport, industries, PWD and energy departments, finance minister Manish Sisodia has asked them to “carefully study the various reports and recommendations made in the past two-three years by various experts and national and international organisations to address the problem of air pollution in Delhi.”

In particular, each HOD has been directed to study the recommendations or suggestions given in the reports to fight air pollution, as relevant to their departments, and provide their analysis on practicability for inclusion in the ‘green budget’.

These six studies that the departments will be referring to are “Comprehensive Study on Air Pollution and Green House Gases in Delhi” by IIT Kanpur (January 2016), “Air Pollution in Delhi – An Analysis” by CPCB (2016), “Breathing Cleaner Air: Ten Scalable Solutions for Indian Cities” by TERI and University of California at San Diego (2016), “Cleaning Delhi’s Air: Implementation Action Plan” by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy (2017), “Promoting Low Carbon Transport in India: Assessment of Heavy Duty Vehicles in Delhi” by United National Environment Programme (2015) and “Truth Telling in Third Party Audits” by J-PAL (2013).

After intra-department meetings from February 2 to 14 to discuss the proposals, a budget meeting would be held on February 15 to shortlist proposals for the green budget.