New Delhi: After more than a decade of Aam Aadmi Party rule in Delhi that also coincided with the worsening of air quality, 2025 is the first Diwali-air pollution test for the BJP. For too long, the BJP has been saying that Diwali was being unfairly singled out as the main polluter by environmentalists. Now, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta faces her first trial-by-firecracker.
There had been a ban on all kinds of firecrackers in the city for the past five years, but the Supreme Court on Wednesday relaxed the restrictions, allowing the use of ‘green’ crackers the day before Diwali and on the day of Diwali, but only during a three-hour window.
Incidentally, the court order came on a day parts of the city witnessed Air Quality Index (AQI) level of 300-plus, denoting ‘very unhealthy’ air quality.
Gupta hailed the SC order as a win for the “sentiments” of the residents of the city who want to celebrate the festival of lights with crackers. “The Delhi government remains fully committed to respecting public sentiment and the vision of a clean and green Delhi,” she said in an X post.
After returning to power in the capital this February following a 27-year hiatus, the BJP government pledged swift action on reducing Delhi’s air pollution and cleaning up the Yamuna.
However, the relaxation of the firecracker ban—supported by the Delhi government in court—poses a setback to those goals.
In August, the Delhi government patted itself on the back for the lowest average AQI (172) in the city in eight years and a rise in the number of ‘good’ AQI days from previous years. Chief Minister Gupta said the government’s efforts seem to be working well.
The real challenge, however, is now—the Diwali season. Every year, despite a ban on firecrackers, AQI levels spike to three to four times the usual, pushing the city into the ‘severe’ air quality category for days.
“We’ve had an usually long monsoon season, which has protected us from heavy air pollution this year. But the winters will be the first time we see the full force of Delhi’s air pollution,” Sunil Dahiya, the founder and lead analyst at think-tank Envirocatalysts, told ThePrint.
Over the past eight months, CM Gupta and Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa have rolled out a string of measures aimed at curbing air pollution, including cloud seeding trials, new electric buses and autorickshaws, additional smog guns and dust control. This year’s floods in Punjab also brought down cases of stubble burning in the neighboring state, helping keep in check the PM2.5 pollutant levels in the national capital.
Experts, however, feel Delhi might still be in for a smoggy Diwali, thanks to policies such as the revocation of the fuel ban order for end-of-life vehicles, relaxation of norms for thermal plants to install flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) systems (that cuts sulphur dioxide emissions), and now the green crackers order.
“Green crackers are not pollution-free, they just emit 25-30 percent less particulate matter than normal crackers and that too in lab conditions,” said environment activist Bhavreen Khandari. “They are a distraction to justify pollution, not eliminate it.”
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Delhi govt’s hits & misses
The Rekha Gupta government’s focus on air pollution mitigation began with the budget for the year 2025-26, in which they allocated Rs 300 crore for pollution control measures, installation of six new continuous ambient air quality monitoring systems, and adding 5,000 new electric buses to the existing fleet. In addition, the government announced new measures at regular intervals with an aim to reduce Delhi’s PM2.5 levels.
“Air pollution is not just a seasonal issue but a year-round health crisis and needs to be dealt with that way,” Gupta had said in July, while releasing the Air Pollution Mitigation Plan 2025.
Most of the measures in the new plan such as cleaning roads, monitoring construction sites and deploying water sprinklers, were similar to actions taken by the AAP government which lost power to the BJP. Initiatives like adding electric buses to the fleet and cloud seeding were initially brought in by the AAP government, and are now being expanded by the BJP government.
Along with the environment department, a team of IIT Kanpur scientists has been overseeing the Delhi government’s first ever cloud-seeding trials. Cloud seeding is a method by which artificial rain is created to dissipate particulate matter in the air and reduce pollution, however its efficacy is still under question.
There has been hullabaloo around this initiative since May, but Delhi is yet to see its first cloud-seeding trial take place. Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said Wednesday the much-anticipated first trial could be held after Diwali, once the India Meteorological Department (IMD) gives a green light.
Another anti-pollution measure that generated a lot of debate was the Commission for Air Quality Management’s announcement in June that all End-of-Life vehicles i.e petrol vehicles older than 15 years and diesel vehicles older than 10 years were not allowed to get fuel in Delhi.
Within a week though, the Delhi environment minister asked CAQM to revoke the order as the public backlash against the ban intensified. This has now left the status of EoL vehicles controversial in Delhi—they had already been banned in Delhi back in 2018, and now they are allowed to refuel but not drive inside the city.
Another major blow to the air pollution control effort was the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s July order which relaxed the sulphur dioxide emission norms for thermal power plants.
Flue-gas desulphurisation systems (FGDs) were recommended for all 537 coal-based power plants in the country to reduce the sulphur dioxide emissions. Based on a new July 2025 order though, only 22 percent of them are mandated to install these FGDs now.
With the city’s air quality already dropping to ‘poor’ and even ‘severe’ in some places days before Diwali, experts feel that controlling air pollution will become even more difficult because of the incoming winter. Due to fog and lower temperatures, suspended air particles become harder to dissipate, and lead to worse and longer air pollution.
Also, implementing the SC green cracker order is likely to face challenges such as ensuring that only green crackers enter the city, and the three-hour window is strictly adhered to.
“If we look at the mitigation measures brought in by the Delhi government this year—they definitely started discussions about air pollution again,” said Dahiya. “But we’re still not tackling the pollutants at their source. That is what is necessary.”
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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