Air Quality Management Plan for 16 Cities go into implementaton

New Delhi, Sep 4 (UNI) Sixteen cities in the country have been identified for implementation of Air Quality Management Plans based on Suspended Particulate Matter(SPM).

The respective State Pollution Control Boards and State Environment Departments have submitted the Action Plans which are at various stages of implementation, a Ministry of Environment and Forests release here said today.

This plan primarily contains phasing out of old vehicles, use of better quality fuel, improved system of checking of in-use vehicles, traffic management etc.

Four cities from Uttar Pradesh and three from Maharashtra are under this scanner. They are Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Pune, Mumbai and Sholapur in Maharashtra.

Other states have one city each to implement this plan. They are Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh; Patna, Bihar; Ahmedabad, Gujarat; Faridabad, Haryana; Jharia, Jharkhand; Bangalore, Karnataka; Jodhpur, Rajasthan; Chennai, Tamil Nadu; and Kolkata in West Bengal.

It is estimated that about 60-70 per cent of pollution is contributed by vehicular emissions.

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