Understanding GRAP!!

With air pollution remaining critically high and a serious health since 2010 in India, especially in the capital city of New Delhi, the Supreme Court of India in 2015 mandated the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to draw up an urgent and comprehensive action plan to tackle this problem. The action plan was mapped out by an expert committee and submitted to the Supreme Court in December 2016. After proper analysis and deliberation, it was accepted and rolled out, thus introducing the Graded Response Action Plan or GRAP to the city of Delhi and the National Capital Region. Implemented in January 2017 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the purpose of this plan was to ensure “prevention, control, and abatement” of air pollution in Delhi-NCR. For the implementation of the plan, the central government set up the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), a statutory body that was tasked to work with other Indian states for development and implementation of si...