New Delhi: Ahead of the Winter session of Parliament, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Friday demanded a detailed discussion in the House on the issue of air pollution in the national capital as he questioned the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on this “health emergency”.
He also demanded a strict, enforceable action plan to tackle air pollution and asked why the Modi government was not showing any urgency or accountability on the issue.
Gandhi held an interaction with a group of mothers at his residence on the issue and shared a video of his conversation with them, with several of them raising concerns over the impact of pollution on the health of their children.
“Every mother I meet tells me the same thing: her child is growing up breathing toxic air. They are exhausted, scared and angry.
“Modi ji, India’s children are choking in front of us. How can you stay silent? Why does your government show no urgency, no plan, no accountability?” he asked in a post on X.
“India needs an immediate, detailed Parliament debate on air pollution and a strict, enforceable action plan to tackle this health emergency,” the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.
“Our children deserve clean air – not excuses and distractions,” he asserted.
In the video, the former Congress president noted that everybody is affected by pollution – the poorest person living in Delhi and the richest person living in Delhi.
“The reason there is pollution is because there are stakeholders who benefit from the pollution and to put it bluntly they are more powerful than you are.
“Now when you are talking of political will, consequences of this power affect political will. If you have 500 to 1000 commercial units who are polluting Delhi, they have political power and the problem is that the average citizen is not organised at all. So, he has no political power,” the Congress leader said in the video while interacting with the women.
He told them that while they already have a choice in terms of dealing with air pollution, many people in India don’t have that.
“You can go to the doctor, but there are many who don’t… Pollution problem is the tip of the sphere.
“I am more than happy to help you because I think it is important. I breath the same air and it is terrible. My niece and nephew grew up with it. You can’t escape it, there is no way,” he said.
To a suggestion by one of the mothers to have a debate in Parliament, Gandhi said, “There would be a fair goal to let us have a debate on air pollution in Parliament.”
He also asked them how they were seriously thinking about organising people and how they are going about it.
During the conversation, a woman told Gandhi that there are almost 500 children under five years who die every day in India because of air pollution and yet this has never been an emergency.
Another woman said that even though this is a chronic national medical emergency, yet there is no advisory from the government and asked what it was doing for a whole generation of kids and why was the government silent on it.
She said, “If we don’t act now, it is going to be like a bomb in the next 10 years”.
Delhi has been battling very poor air quality from the past 15 days.
According to the forecast by the Air Quality Early Warning System for Delhi, the air quality is likely to remain ‘very poor’ over the coming week.
With Delhi’s air quality slipping deep into the ‘very poor’ and ‘severe’ categories this winter, doctors have stressed the need for regular diagnostic screening to detect early signs of pollution-linked health deterioration, especially among smokers, asthma patients, children and people with pre-existing cardiac or respiratory conditions.
Experts said preventive health checks are becoming increasingly important as toxic air triggers airway inflammation, reduces lung function and aggravates underlying diseases.
