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The air quality in Delhi worsened on Sunday, settling at the upper end of the “very poor” category. The dip prompted senior Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Jairam Ramesh to target the BJP government in the Capital over the “awful situation” and the recent clouding-seeding trial, with Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa rushing to defend the experiment. Mr. Ramesh called the experiment a “cruel joke” and a “headline grabbing” measure, taking to his X account to say that the Delhi government has spent ₹34 crore on the winter cloud-seeding experiment in order to improve air quality despite specialised agencies having advised against it. “Cloud seeding certainly looks very dramatic and gives the impression that something is demonstrably being done but when the overwhelming scientific consensus raises so many doubts and serious questions on its efficacy, is it wise to lay so much store by it except as a headline-grabbing measure?” the Congress leader said. Mr. Sirsa hit back saying cloud seeding was a solution worth exploring and was better than the crores of supees spent by the previous Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government on media campaigns that had “no scientific backing”. “At best, it [cloud seeding] may provide us with a viable answer, and at worst, it will enhance our scientific understanding,” the Minister said. Misinformation drive Replying to Mr. Ramesh’s post, Mr. Sirsa called it a misinformation campaign launched in collusion and connivance with AAP to undermine the genuine achievements of the Rekha Gupta government. “Anyone with even a modicum understanding of scientific method knows that the only way to resolve an opinion is to conduct experiments, especially when those experiments are conducted by an organisation as reputed as IIT Kanpur and are as cost-efficient as the present trials,” he said. The Minister added that more than four sorties, conducted at a cost of less than ₹1 crore with a total agreement value of about ₹3.4 crore covering several more sorties, have already yielded valuable data. “We have learnt that even when it does not rain, cloud seeding results in a reduction of AQI (Air Quality Index),” Mr. Sirsa said. Ms. Vadra also called for action saying year after year, the citizens of Delhi are subjected to this toxicity with no recourse. “The Central and State governments need to act immediately, we will all support and cooperate with whatever actions they choose to take to mitigate this awful situation,” she said in a post on X. Tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta in her post, she said she had returned to Delhi by air after having spent time at her constituency Wayanad and then Bachwara in Bihar to find the “filthy smog” truly shocking. “Those who suffer from respiratory issues, children who commute to school every day and senior citizens especially need urgent intervention to clear the filthy smog we are all breathing,” the Congress leader said. The attack by the Congress comes at at a time when AAP has been criticising not only the government’s cloud-seeding trials but also accusing it of manipulating AQI data to conceal the grim situation. The Delhi Chief Minister had hit out at AAP saying air quality data could not be tampered with.
