National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), an initiative by the Central Government to tackle the air pollution has been included Nagpur, the only city from Vidarbha selected for this programme. The list carries the name of those cities that come under Smart Cities Mission (SCM) and also in non-attainment cities.
NCAP is a long-term, time-bound, national-level strategy to tackle the air pollution problem across the country. Under NCAP, 122 non-attainment cities have been identified across the country based on the Air Quality data from 2014-2018. Lists of Smart Cities under the SCM, which are also among non-attainment cities, have been included in this NCAP. Nagpur is the only city from Vidarbha that has been included in NCAP, while five other cities from Maharashtra include Aurangabad, Nashik, Pune, Sholapur and Thane. Total 47 cities from all over India have been included in the list of NCAP. The programme is targeting to achieve 20% to 30% reduction in air pollution till 2024. The city specific action plan has been prepared which, inter-alia; include measures for strengthening the monitoring network, reducing vehicular, industrial emissions, increasing public awareness etc. This will be a mid-term, five-year project to begin with keeping 2019 as the base year. However, the international experiences and national studies indicate that significant outcome in terms of air pollution initiatives are visible only in the long-term, and hence the programme may be further extended to 20–25 years in the long-term after a mid-term review of the outcomes.
The action plan has been prepared for all these cities and it will be monitored by Committees at Central and State-level namely Steering Committee, Monitoring Committee and Implementation Committee. As per the programme, air quality of cities will be monitored by State Pollution Control Boards which publishes their results from time to time.
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