New Delhi: The Central Pollution Control Board on Wednesday rejected allegations of manipulation of air quality data and said that the monitoring stations are automated and no human intervention is possible in the calculations and monitoring.
The Delhi government was accused of spraying water around air-quality monitoring stations to reduce dangerous readings and even shutting them down during peak pollution periods.
CPCB Chairman Veer Vikram Yadav told reporters here, "Monitoring and data collection is automated...the stations generate data every 15 minutes and the AQI is calculated every hour, after which the average AQI is prepared. These stations are not manual and hence no human intervention or manipulation is possible."
Responding to a question on allegations of water spraying around monitoring stations to manipulate air quality data, Yadav said, "Monitoring stations have been set up after conducting a scientific study of their locations." Delhi has 39 continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations, the highest for any Indian city.
The air quality in the national capital remained in the 'very poor' category on Wednesday morning. With an AQI reading of 335, this is the second consecutive day of 'very poor' AQI. There was some relief from the toxic air on Sunday and Monday, although the air quality again turned 'very poor' on Tuesday.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had alleged that most of the applications on people's mobile phones were taking data from the government's air quality monitoring stations, while the data from these stations was being manipulated.