New Delhi, Oct. 23 -- A day after stage-1 of the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap) was invoked across Delhi NCR, an analysis of the revised Grap since 2022 has shown the emergency-based plan has failed to curb episodic spikes across Delhi-NCR - with pollution levels rising in 10 out of the 12 instances since 2022 when stages 3 and 4 of the plan were invoked.

Carried out by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), the assessment looked at the mean air quality index (AQI) in the seven days before the episode began and compared it with the mean in the seven days after it - finding the AQI was higher in the following week in 10 of the 12 episodes and it declined in only two instances. Essentially, pollution spikes from danger...