The Bombay High Court on Thursday remarked that officials cannot attribute Mumbai's air pollution to ash clouds from the volcanic eruption in Ethiopia, noting that the city's air quality had been poor long before that event.
A bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad was requested to resume hearings on a series of petitions filed in 2023 concerning the city’s air pollution problem, PTI reported.
Senior counsels Darius Khambata and Janak Dwarkadas, appearing for the petitioners, said the AQI in the city has been consistently poor and above 300 this month.
Additional government pleader Jyoti Chavan said air pollution has worsened due to the volcanic eruption in Ethiopia two days back. The court, however, discarded this and said air pollution has been bad much before the eruption of the volcano.
“Even before this eruption, if one stepped out visibility was poor beyond 500 metres,” the court said.
The bench, while referring to the situation in Delhi, which is witnessing alarming levels of AQI, asked what effective measures can be taken to address the issue. "What can be the most effective measures? We are all seeing what is happening in Delhi? What is the effect of that," the bench questioned, as reported by PTI.
The court posted the matter for hearing on Friday.
Hayli Gubbi, a shield volcano in Ethiopia's Afar region, erupted on Sunday, producing a large ash plume that rose to around 14 kilometres (45,000 feet) in the sky. The plume spread eastward across the Red Sea and towards the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent.
High-level winds carried the ash cloud from Ethiopia across the Red Sea, Yemen, Oman, the Arabian Sea and then towards western and northern India, the India Meteorological Department said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Mumbai's air quality remains troubling, with recent data showing an overall AQI in the “unhealthy” category (around 250) as of Thursday.
Ongoing development activities, such as large-scale roadwork and metro construction, are widely regarded as key factors contributing to the elevated dust and PM2.5 pollution in the city.
