Mumbai AQI Crisis: BMC Halts 53 Construction Sites as Toxic Smog Deepens
BMC launches war on construction dust as city AQI crosses dangerous 300 mark.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation served stop-work notices to 53 major construction projects spread across G-South, E and P-North wards on Thursday evening as Mumbai’s Air Quality Index soared past the severe 300 threshold for consecutive days, plunging the metropolis into a thick grey haze that now visibly competing with Delhi’s toxic winter blanket. Projects in Siddharth Nagar, Mazgaon and Malad West bore the brunt of the sudden crackdown.
Additional Municipal Commissioner Ashwini Joshi chaired an emergency review meeting where officials discovered that 117 of the 662 mandatory sensor-based AQI monitors installed at construction sites had been deliberately switched off or tampered with to evade detection. She ordered 95 newly formed ward-level flying squads to conduct surprise night inspections and warned developers of immediate demolition of non-compliant structures if sensors remain inactive.
The Bombay High Court delivered a stinging rebuke to the state’s attempt to blame an Ethiopian volcanic eruption for the Hayli Gubbi shield volcano that spewed ash on Sunday for Mumbai’s suffocating smog. The bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Gautam Ankhad noted that visibility has been under 500 metres for weeks even before the overseas plume reached Indian shores and demanded accountable, measurable action instead of convenient excuses.
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Political outrage erupted simultaneously as Shiv Sena MP Milind Deora shot off a letter to BMC Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani demanding an extraordinary city-wide moratorium on all excavation and construction until the air becomes breathable again, while Shiv Sena UBT leader Aaditya Thackeray accused the ruling dispensation of placing builder profits of contractors above the lungs of 2.2 crore residents and destroying green cover in the name of infrastructure.
The civic body highlighted its multi-pronged offensive including forcing 209 of 593 bakeries to switch to piped natural gas or electricity, deploying 150 water-mist cannons and anti-smog guns on major roads, enforcing scientific debris disposal, mandating 35-foot metal sheet barricades wrapped in green cloth around every site, and accelerating the shift to electric buses, insisting these measures have already prevented the situation from becoming catastrophic.
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