Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation enforces pollution rules for private sites, ignores own

Time of India

7 days ago

Ahmedabad: While private builders in Ahmedabad have been mandated to install air quality monitoring sensors at construction sites for over a year, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has failed to enforce the same standard on its own projects.
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Despite clear orders from senior officials over a year ago, engineers overseeing AMC's construction work have not installed these sensors, citing the absence of provisions in existing tenders.
AMC's engineering department is currently handling the construction of nine flyovers, underpasses, and railway overbridges — none of which are equipped with air quality sensors. Likewise, new civic infrastructure projects such as ward offices, community halls, sewage and water treatment plants, party plots, water tanks, and pumping stations also lack these sensors.
Even newly floated tenders continue to exclude this mandatory requirement, highlighting a gap between AMC's public commitments and its internal practices.
Ironically, AMC has been pushing private construction sites to comply with this rule for over a year, especially as part of its initiatives under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP). The civic body has also been running awareness drives and pilot projects to reduce dust and emissions, including the development of urban forests and oxygen parks, installation of mechanical smart parking systems, automated traffic regulation systems, CNG furnaces in crematoriums, procurement of CNG buses and electric vehicle charging stations with solar power supply for electric buses.
Many of these measures were overseen by a consultant agency hired by AMC's air quality management cell, whose term was recently extended by a year.
Despite its internal lapses, AMC has been actively pursuing various pollution-control projects and has seen measurable results. This includes a robust monitoring system, utilizing both CAAQMS and manual stations, to identify pollution hotspots. Based on this data and source apportionment studies, mitigation plans are being developed.
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The city is also actively participating in a central govt initiative by regularly uploading critical information such as SVS, grant expenditure, utilization certificates, and PIP to the PRANA portal.
In addition to these technical and administrative efforts, a significant focus is on public engagement and internal training. Workshops are being held to train staff on data uploading procedures, and public awareness programmes are being organized across the city.
Furthermore, a new software is under development to streamline the complaint handling process related to air quality.
A recent AQI survey by the Gujarat Environment Management Institute (GEMI) showed a 40% improvement in Ahmedabad's air quality, leading the Centre to reward the city with an incentive grant of Rs 120.04 crore for 2022–23. Consequently, the consultant agency's term was extended.
AMC collects fees for air sensors, but installations lag
Ahmedabad: A year after the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) rolled out its policy to install air quality monitoring sensors at large construction sites, the results are mostly invisible, much like the sensors themselves.
Though builders dutifully pay the required fees while getting their plans approved, the civic body has failed to ensure timely sensor installation, thanks to a chronic shortage in supply and lethargic performance by the designated agencies.
"Under the rules introduced in Aug 2023, construction projects over 10,000 sq m must install air quality sensors, which are meant to alert AMC officials if pollution levels spike.
These devices are connected to an online monitoring platform that tracks air quality in real time and is supposed to trigger fines in case of repeated violations. The idea was sound: monitor, warn, penalise. But over the past year, not a single builder has been fined based on the data collected, largely because the infrastructure meant to generate that data never got installed at many sites," said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
AMC now plans to install air quality monitoring sensors at every construction site, collecting fees from builders when approving construction plans, and the designated agency installs the sensors. So far, 100 sensors have been set up across the city. But behind the scenes, AMC's plan is stuck in a tangle of poor planning and patchy execution.
"While three agencies were roped in to handle installation and maintenance, only one has been reliably showing up for work. The others do not work regularly on maintenance. They collect fees during plan approval stage but do not install sensors on time," said the official. This leaves AMC with a backlog of construction sites without proper monitoring.
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