Reacting strongly to the city’s steep rise in air pollution, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court on Thursday directed that a suo motu Public Interest Litigation (PIL) be registered, after pollution levels in Nagpur recently exceeded those in Mumbai and Pune. The court’s move came immediately after media reports highlighted the city’s worsening air quality.
A division bench of Justice Anil Kilor and Justice Rajnish Vyas noted that Nagpur’s air quality has been worsening at an “alarming pace”, driven by uncontrolled construction work, pervasive dust pollution and winter inversion that has caused toxic particulate matter to remain trapped near ground level.
As per Central Pollution Control Board data, several areas in the city touched an AQI above 250 at 5 am on November 21 — a category marked as severe and directly harmful to health. The judges remarked that the crisis was “escalating day by day,” calling for immediate action to prevent a larger public health disaster.
The bench appointed Advocate Shantanu Khedkar as amicus curiae and instructed him to file the petition within four weeks. The court also took note of recent media coverage detailing the rising health complaints and respiratory problems faced by citizens.
This marks the season’s first judicial step toward addressing Nagpur’s deteriorating environmental conditions and is expected to push local bodies, pollution regulators and government agencies toward stricter monitoring and enforcement, including dust-control measures at construction sites.
With the suo motu PIL set to seek detailed submissions from multiple authorities, the proceedings are likely to open a deeper inquiry into both air and noise pollution in the city — a city widely known as the “Tiger Capital,” but now struggling for clean, breathable air.
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