Five construction sites in the city, including three in Udyog Vihar, were sealed on Tuesday for breaching dust-control norms during an enforcement drive by the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB). The board’s North Regional Office acted against the sites for violating directions issued by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) and failing to meet requirements on HSPCB’s dust portal.
After inspecting equipment at the premises and finding the sites non-compliant, officials placed notices on their gates. They said construction sites that fail to follow prescribed dust-control measures would face strict action. Inspections will continue across the region, they added.
The enforcement drive is part of pollution-control authorities’ efforts to limit dust emissions from construction, a source of particulate pollution in the National Capital Region. Construction sites must implement dust-mitigation measures set out in applicable pollution-control directions, including steps to prevent dust from leaving the premises and compliance with monitoring and reporting requirements.
HSPCB uses its dust portal to monitor construction-site compliance. The board cited violations of portal requirements as one of the reasons for acting against the five sites. On Oct 30, CAQM announced a suspension of construction and demolition activities across Delhi-NCR from Nov 5 to 20. The order bars demolition and construction work on highways, roads, flyovers and pipelines.
Under previous CAQM directives, construction projects covering 500 square metres or more are required to register on the state’s dust mitigation portal and install geo-fenced pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras, along with low-cost PM2.5 and PM10 particulate-matter sensors. Live camera feeds must be connected to both the state pollution control portal and CAQM’s Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) in Delhi using a real-time streaming protocol and application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing authorities to monitor construction sites remotely.
