Pollution awareness to spread from Delhi to other states: Advisor to PM Tarun Kapoor | Today’s news
Pollution awareness will spread across the country and not remain confined to Delhi and neighboring cities, Tarun Kapoor, advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), said on Wednesday.
There has been a lot of pollution in and around Delhi and it will spread to other parts of the country. Most north Indian cities routinely experience poor air quality during winter, Kapoor said, speaking at the launch of a report by Delhi-based think tank The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) on India’s multi-fuel approach to clean up vehicle emissions.
Kapoor said India’s transition to cleaner fuels away from gasoline and diesel is certain, but the availability and cost of new cleaner fuels will play a major role in deciding the country’s exact strategy, whether it will be electric vehicles only or also biofuels and natural gas as a transition fuel.
“Pollution is one big aspect. There has been a lot of debate around Delhi, but then that debate will spread to other cities and then to other parts of the country,” Kapoor said.
North Indian cities are polluted during winter, Kapoor said. “But it’s not just Delhi. If you look at the data, cities in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are also seeing high pollution levels. So this pollution awareness will spread.”
Kapoor said vehicle manufacturers, other equipment manufacturers and fuel suppliers need to be aware of widespread pollution and its impacts.
He also emphasized that all authorities must take unified decisions regarding India’s clean mobility journey. “Right now there are Supreme Court guidelines to reduce air pollution in Delhi, then we have the road transport ministry and we have state governments. They all have policies or ideas at times which may differ,” he said.
Cleaner mobility
Teri’s study found that no single fuel can be the best choice for the energy transition. “A key finding of this study is that India should not propose one universal fuel choice as the single winner to replace all existing mobility options; rather, it requires a phased transition in which different technologies fulfill different roles across fleets, applications and transition phases,” the study summary said.
India’s move towards cleaner mobility includes various central government policies such as incentive programs for the sale and production of electric vehicles, enterprise average fuel economy standards that incentivize various powertrains, including hybrid and flex-fuel vehicles, and tax incentives for cleaner vehicles.
India, the world’s third-largest automobile market by sales, is also the world’s second-largest electric two-wheeler market, the world’s largest electric three-wheeler market, and the world’s third-largest e-bus market. According to data from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA), India’s electric vehicle sales rose 24.6% to 2.45 million units in FY26 from 1.97 million units in the previous fiscal.
