New Delhi: While Delhi and most of north India are currently choking under severe levels of air pollution, about 45% of scientific and technical posts in pollution control boards and committees across the country are vacant, the Union environment ministry said in parliament.In the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India’s top regulatory pollution control body directly under the Union environment ministry, there are 16.28% vacancies across such posts, said Kirti Vardhan Singh, the minister of state for environment on December 8 in the Lok Sabha.Singh was responding to questions raised by Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) MP, Rathnavel Sachithanantham. He had asked whether the CPCB and state pollution control boards (SPCBs) were facing a severe shortage of field-level staff, such as environmental engineers and scientists. He also asked for details of the current total sanctioned strength and the number of vacant positions for field-level staff in the CPCB and all SPCBs combined, and the details of the plan and timeline proposed by the government to address this manpower shortage.3,161 posts across country vacantApart from the CPCB, there are 28 SPCBs and eight pollution control committees (PCCs, which work in Union Territories including the Delhi-NCR). Together, their sanctioned strength for scientific and technical posts is 6,932, of which 3,161 or 45.6% were vacant, Singh said. Singh said that 64 of the 393 sanctioned scientific and technical positions in the CPCB are vacant. Of the 6,137 positions in SPCBs, 2,921 are vacant. And of the 402 positions in PCCs, 176 are vacant.Also read: India’s Air Quality Row: How The Govt is Consistently Rejecting Data And ScienceWhy are there so many vacant posts? Singh passed the buck onto the state and Union Territory administrations. “The state pollution control boards and pollution control committees are under the administrative control of respective State Governments/UT Administration and the responsibility to fill up vacancies in SPCBs/PCCs lies with the concerned State Govt./ UT Administration,” the minister said, adding, “appointment of officers and employees of the State Pollution Control Boards and Pollution Control Committees is done by the SPCBs/PCCs under their respective regulations.”A recurring trendThe inability of pollution control boards and committees to fill vacant posts has been ongoing for at least five years now, according to a report by The Times of India. Vacancies have ranged from 44-51% during these years, it said. As per the report, a statement in parliament in March this year listed the total vacancies across all posts in the country in SPCBs and PCCs at 49%, (5,671 of the sanctioned 11,562 posts were empty).Also read: ‘AQI, AQI’ Chants as Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta is Booed at Messi’s EventAs per the minister’s response in March, 12 of the 28 SPCBs in India had over 50% vacancy, ToI reported. Sikkim topped the list with 100% vacancy and was followed by Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, both lacking more than 70% staff. Kerala was the only large state where the vacancy was less than 10%. The vacancy was 9.3% in Goa, while Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland had no vacancies. Among PCCs, the vacancy in Delhi was 44.5%, and 69% in Ladakh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.