Introduction
Every winter, as north India’s atmospheric dynamics trap pollutants under a thermal inversion layer, the Delhi-NCR region experiences an air quality crisis of a scale that would be unacceptable in any jurisdiction that fully recognised the constitutional dimensions of the right to breathe clean air. PM2.5 concentrations routinely exceed the World Health Organisation’s annual guideline of five micrograms per cubic metre by a factor of twenty or more. The cities of Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida, and Greater Noida are consistently among the most polluted urban centres in the world by measured particulate concentration. The health consequences are catastrophic and well documented: significantly elevated incidence of cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and adverse birth outcomes, with the poor and the elderly bearing disproportionate burdens because their housing, occupational exposure, and limited access to healthcare multiply the effects of ambient pollution.
The institutional response to this crisis has evolved significantly over the past decade, most consequentially with the enactment of the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Act 2021 (CAQM Act). The CAQM, established by this Act, represents the most ambitious attempt yet to create a single, empowered authority capable of coordinating the fragmented and often conflicting regulatory actions of the Central Government, the Government of Delhi, and the state governments of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan that collectively determine the air quality of the NCR. Whether CAQM’s institutional design matches the ambition of its mandate, and whether judicial oversight can drive compliance where administrative coordination has historically failed, are the central analytical questions that this article addresses.
Legal Framework
The CAQM Act 2021 establishes the Commission for Air Quality Management as a statutory body with overriding powers over state governments in matters relating to air quality in the NCR and adjoining areas. The Commission’s jurisdiction encompasses the prevention, control, and abatement of air pollution in the NCR and adjoining areas of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh to the extent they contribute to air pollution in the NCR. The Commission has the power to issue directions to any person, officer, or authority in these states; to investigate complaints; to take cognizance of violations; and to adjudicate disputes between state governments on air quality matters.
The CAQM Act’s most significant governance provision is the hierarchy of authority it establishes. Directions of the Commission override the directions of any state government or local authority in the covered states on matters within the Commission’s jurisdiction. In cases of conflict between a Commission direction and a state government order, the Commission’s direction prevails. This hierarchy addresses one of the most persistent failures of the pre-CAQM regulatory framework, under which each state government could and did pursue its own regulatory priorities without coordination, allowing emissions from one state to undermine air quality improvements achieved in another.
The Commission administers the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), a framework first developed by the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority in 2017 and significantly revised since. GRAP operates on four stages calibrated to the Air Quality Index (AQI) in the NCR. Stage I (poor air quality, AQI 201-300) invokes restrictions on industries with inadequate dust control, construction activities without requisite dust suppression measures, and uncovered vehicles carrying construction material. Stage II (very poor, AQI 301-400) adds restrictions on diesel generator sets, road construction, and some industrial activity. Stage III (severe, AQI 401-450) imposes more comprehensive restrictions including closure of stone crushers, hot mix plants, and certain industries, and restrictions on light commercial vehicles in Delhi. Stage IV (severe+, AQI above 450) triggers the most restrictive measures, including closure of schools, restrictions on entry of trucks into Delhi, work-from-home directives for government employees, and consideration of odd-even vehicle rationing.
The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 provides the underlying statutory authority for air quality regulation, establishing State Pollution Control Boards as the primary regulatory agencies for industrial and vehicular sources. The CAQM Act creates an additional layer of authority over these boards within the NCR context, creating a hierarchical rather than replacement relationship with the existing regulatory framework.
Judicial Developments
The Supreme Court’s continuing oversight of Delhi air quality, exercised through M.C. Mehta v. Union of India proceedings dating to 1988, represents one of the longest-running environmental litigation sagas in Indian legal history. The Court’s orders in this case have resulted in the mandating of compressed natural gas for the Delhi public transport fleet, the closure of polluting industries within Delhi, restrictions on commercial vehicle movement, and the creation of successive institutional mechanisms for air quality management. The case has also produced the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA), whose functions were substantially absorbed by the CAQM when it was established.
In recent years, the Court has exercised continuing oversight of GRAP implementation, frequently convening during November and December to assess the Commission’s response to deteriorating air quality. The Court has expressed frustration with the Commission’s tendency to implement GRAP measures belatedly, after AQI thresholds have already been exceeded, and with the patchy compliance with GRAP measures particularly in surrounding states where the Commission’s authority has been tested.
Arjun Gopal v. Union of India, the Diwali firecracker case, produced a series of Supreme Court orders from 2017 onwards restricting the sale and use of fireworks in Delhi-NCR to specified hours and prohibiting firecrackers that exceed decibel and chemical composition standards. The Court’s engagement with this issue illustrated the tension between traditional religious practices and environmental protection, and produced a legal framework that attempted to balance these interests through regulated rather than absolute prohibition. The implementation of these orders has been inconsistent, with significant continued illegal firecracker use in several years following the orders.
The constitutional dimensions of the right to clean air were addressed in M.K. Ranjitsinh (2024), where the Supreme Court recognised the right against adverse effects of climate change under Articles 14 and 21. More specifically in the air quality context, the Court had earlier, in the Delhi air pollution proceedings, held that the right to life under Article 21 includes the right to an environment that is not injurious to health and to a pollution-free environment. Combining these threads of jurisprudence, there is a compelling constitutional argument that the state’s failure to achieve clean air standards in Delhi-NCR, year after year for decades, constitutes a continuing violation of the fundamental rights of NCR residents.
Contemporary Issues and Analysis
The stubble burning controversy exposes the most fundamental limitation of the CAQM’s institutional design: its authority to coordinate regulatory action within the NCR and adjoining areas is structurally weaker with respect to agricultural activities in Punjab and Haryana than with respect to industrial and construction activities. Stubble burning, the practice of burning paddy crop residue in fields after harvest to clear land for the next planting season, contributes significantly to the October and November peaks of NCR air pollution. Studies by various institutions estimate stubble burning’s contribution to PM2.5 in Delhi during peak burning periods at between fifteen and forty percent.
The CAQM’s authority to direct state governments to prevent stubble burning is legally sound under its enabling Act, but practical enforcement is constrained by the political economy of Punjab and Haryana agriculture. Paddy cultivation is the economic mainstay of millions of farmers in these states, and the timeline between paddy harvest and wheat planting is too compressed, in the absence of mechanised crop residue management equipment, to allow farmers to manage residue through alternatives to burning. The Commission has directed state governments to provide in-situ residue management equipment through subsidies and to penalise unauthorised burning. Progress has been made in some districts but the overall reduction in burning incidents has been insufficient to produce substantial air quality improvement.
The scientific debate about GRAP’s effectiveness has intensified. While GRAP represents a systematic graduated response framework, several atmospheric scientists have argued that by the time Stage IV measures are implemented, the atmospheric conditions driving the AQI spike are already in place, and the pollution control measures taken during Stage IV do not significantly change AQI outcomes because the meteorological factors dominating pollution levels are beyond human control. This critique suggests that GRAP’s value lies more in Stage I and Stage II prevention, implemented consistently throughout the year, than in reactive crisis management during the winter emergency. The Commission’s shift toward year-round emission source management, rather than crisis-period restriction, is an important but incompletely implemented policy evolution.
The inter-state dimension of air quality governance creates accountability diffusion that CAQM’s institutional design partially but not fully resolves. When Delhi’s Chief Minister attributes air quality deterioration to Punjab’s stubble burning, and Punjab’s government attributes it to Delhi’s vehicles and industries, and Haryana points to industrial emissions from Faridabad and Gurugram, and Uttar Pradesh notes that its contributions to Delhi’s air come from sources within Delhi itself, no single government bears the political consequences of the collective failure. CAQM’s cross-state jurisdiction is intended to cut through this attribution diffusion, but in practice, state governments retain significant incentives to resist or minimally comply with CAQM directions that impose political costs, particularly in agricultural constituencies.
Comparative and International Perspective
Beijing’s trajectory from extreme air pollution in the early 2010s to substantially improved air quality by the early 2020s is widely cited as evidence that rapid and dramatic air quality improvement is achievable with sufficient political will and institutional capacity. China’s Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law was amended in 2015 to make local government officials directly accountable for air quality outcomes in their jurisdictions, including through removal from office for persistent failure to meet targets. The State Council’s Blue Sky Protection Plan (2018-2020) set binding targets for PM2.5 reductions in key urban areas and backed them with mandatory industrial capacity closures, heating fuel switching subsidies, and vehicle emission standards. Beijing’s PM2.5 concentrations fell by approximately sixty percent between 2013 and 2020.
The comparison is instructive but requires qualification. China’s ability to implement industrial closures and relocations through administrative directive, without the constraints of property rights, due process requirements, or political opposition that characterise Indian governance, gave its air quality programme enforcement tools that India cannot replicate. India’s cleaner air challenge must be met through regulatory frameworks that respect constitutional rights and democratic accountability, which requires more sophisticated instrument design and more sustained political commitment.
The United Kingdom’s Environment Act 2021 establishes legally binding targets for PM2.5 concentrations in ambient air, with the government required by law to achieve an annual mean PM2.5 concentration of ten micrograms per cubic metre across the country by 2040. The legally binding character of these targets, with the obligation on the government to publish annual progress reports and to explain departures from planned trajectories before Parliament, creates accountability mechanisms that India’s air quality framework currently lacks.
Practical and Policy Implications
The CAQM’s operational effectiveness has been hindered by its dependence on state government cooperation for enforcement of its directions, the limited technical capacity of its secretariat relative to the complexity of the sources it regulates, and the absence of politically credible consequences for state governments that fail to implement Commission directions. Strengthening the Commission requires both institutional investment and political backing from the highest levels of the central government, without which state governments treat it as one more regulatory body to be managed rather than an authority to be complied with.
The emissions inventory for Delhi-NCR, which identifies the sources and magnitudes of pollution-generating emissions, needs constant updating as the source mix evolves. Vehicular emissions, once the dominant anthropogenic contributor to Delhi’s PM2.5, have been partially addressed through BS-VI emission standards and increasing electric vehicle penetration. Industrial emissions from the surrounding industrial belt, dust from construction and roads, and biomass burning for domestic heating in low-income areas have become relatively more significant contributors. GRAP measures need to be recalibrated periodically to focus on currently dominant sources rather than reflecting the source distribution of an earlier period.
Suggestions and Reforms
The CAQM Act should be amended to establish a dedicated Air Quality Compliance Fund, financed by penalties collected from violators, that provides targeted grants to state governments for stubble management equipment subsidies, industrial pollution control upgrades for small and medium enterprises, and public transport electrification. This would directly link the punitive and incentive functions of the regulatory framework, channelling enforcement revenues into the structural solutions that prevent violations in the first place.
India should adopt legally binding annual mean PM2.5 concentration targets for all Class I cities, with a statutory obligation on the Central Government to publish progress reports and to explain before Parliament any year in which targets are missed. The accountability mechanism of mandatory Parliamentary reporting has proven effective in the UK context and would focus political attention on air quality outcomes rather than regulatory process compliance.
The GRAP framework should be supplemented by a continuous emission monitoring requirement for all major industrial sources in the NCR, with real-time data submitted to a public registry. Real-time visibility of industrial emissions would enable targeted enforcement when GRAP measures are in force, rather than the current system of blanket restrictions that impose costs on compliant and non-compliant industries alike.
Conclusion
Delhi’s air quality governance represents one of the most complex and consequential regulatory challenges in Indian environmental law. The CAQM’s establishment marks a genuine institutional advance, consolidating fragmented state authorities into a single coordinating body with overriding powers. But institutional design is a necessary rather than sufficient condition for regulatory effectiveness. The political economy of pollution control in a multi-state region with powerful agricultural and industrial constituencies, the limitations of reactive GRAP-based crisis management, and the structural inadequacy of state government enforcement capacity collectively constrain the CAQM’s ability to deliver the clean air that NCR residents’ constitutional rights demand.
The fundamental insight of two decades of Supreme Court oversight in this domain is that incremental institutional tinkering is inadequate to the scale of the problem. What is required is a transformation of the energy, transportation, and agricultural systems that generate the emissions that make Delhi-NCR’s air harmful, backed by investments in clean technology, regulatory enforcement, and politically credible accountability for air quality outcomes. Courts can mandate this transformation; only sustained political commitment can deliver it.
