Bengaluru: The government is working to ensure that air quality in the national capital will improve by 15% a year from now, promised Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav on January 15. Yadav was speaking at a conclave on pollution organised by a television channel.Yadav also blamed the opposition for the issue of air pollution not being discussed in Parliament during the last session. However, this is a claim that the Congress has rejected. ‘Will improve air quality by 15% this year’Air quality in the national capital will improve by at least 15% this year, promised union environment minister Bhupender Yadav during an interview at the ‘Pollution Ka Solution Conclave’ organised by India TV on January 15 at New Delhi. Yadav said this in response to a question on how long Delhi would have to wait for clean air. Yadav’s statement may have referred to a 15-20% improvement in Air Quality Index (AQI, which is a measure of air quality) levels that a recent government statement claimed Delhi could witness due to several actions that the government has promised to take. A January 12 press release by the union environment ministry had said that a “coordinated, target-based action plan by all NCR governments is expected to lead to a 15-20% improvement in AQI levels by the end of this year”. Per the release and what Yadav said at the interview, these actions include identifying 62 traffic hotspots where an Intelligent Traffic Management System will be implemented especially during peak traffic hours to ensure lesser traffic in Delhi and the NCR. To achieve better air quality in the coming year, the government is taking both short term and long term measures, Yadav also said at the interview. Yadav claimed that the government had developed a roadmap on how to go about reducing air pollution in New Delhi. Though the minister did not expand on this, he was possibly referring to the ‘Annual Action Plans’ that the government asked different stakeholders to put together to bring down air pollution in the city. Yadav repeated the points specified in a government press release on December 3 last year, which specified these actions that the government planned to take, that include establishing an online monitoring system for emission control for industrial units in the NCR.At the interview on January 15, Yadav also said that good air days had increased in Delhi last year.“The acchey din [good days] increased from 116 in 2016 to 200 now. I agree this is not ideal…In 2016, the number of days with AQI higher than 400 was 25. We have decreased that to 8 now,” Yadav said.But the numbers don’t tally. In December, Yadav told a news house that the number of good days in Delhi – defined as those recording an AQI between 0 and 200 – had increased to 200 days in 2025, from 110 in 2016.Changing definitions?Another issue is that there is a difference in what Yadav, as per this report, categorised ‘good’ days as, and what the AQI officially delineates as ‘good’. The AQI is officially slotted into six categories:0-50: Good50-100: Satisfactory100-200: Moderate200-300: Poor300-400: Very Poor400-500: SevereOfficially, ‘Good’ refers to the lowest AQI category, which causes only minimal impact to human health. Both the ‘Satisfactory’ and ‘Moderate’ categories come with health impacts – “May cause minor breathing discomfort to sensitive people”, and “May cause breathing discomfort to people with lung disease such as asthma, and discomfort to people with heart disease, children and older adults”, respectively. So considering a range of 0 to 200 in AQI – as Yadav and his ministry have done several times including in this press release – means that the Good, Satisfactory and Moderate categories are all clubbed into one and collectively called “good air quality days”, even though two of those categories are not ideally “good” because they do come with health impacts. Going by the official definition of ‘Good’ AQI days (0-50), Delhi has allegedly not witnessed a single good air day for two years, reported Hindustan Times in November last year.Moreover, evidence has surfaced to show that AQI numbers are possibly being altered artificially; sometimes, air quality data even disappears. The double-engine Delhi government has come under fire for attempts to tamper with data that contributes to the city’s Air Quality Index (AQI). In October last year, the Aam Aadmi Party accused the ruling party in Delhi, the BJP, of spraying water near air quality monitoring stations using tankers. Mists of water help settle particulate matter, thus artificially lowering their concentrations on the monitors. In the same month, during Diwali, several government portals that provide real-time estimates of AQI at different monitoring stations across the city also blanked out for hours. The minister also claimed in the interview on January 15 that stubble burning, which affects air quality in Delhi and the NCR, has now decreased by 80 to 90%.Yadav’s ministry has reiterated this several times. The last was on December 11, when the environment ministry said in a press note: “With the coordinated efforts, the States of Punjab and Haryana have collectively recorded about 90% reduction in fire incidences during paddy harvesting season in the year 2025 in comparison to the same period in the year 2022.” However, a recent analysis of satellite imagery released on December 8 by research think-tank iFOREST found that the decrease in farm fires is actually a picture painted by the use of wrong data, as The Wire had reported.Cites commotion for lack of debate in parliamentIn response to a question about why the issue of air pollution was not even discussed in Parliament during the last session (the Winter Session), Yadav blamed opposition parties. He claimed that the commotions created by members of the Congress party on the day the matter was to be tabled was what prevented the Parliament from discussing the issue. “Just before the debate, members of the Congress got on the stage of the Speaker and raised slogans,” Yadav said. “We were ready to give answers there….there is complete political will,” he added. He also said that it was the current government that brought in the AQI system.Yadav echoed what his party members have said. Earlier, in December, Kiren Rijiju had also blamed members of the opposition for ‘stalling’ the debate on air pollution even though the Union government had been ready to discuss it:“…[T]he opposition’s behaviour during the debate in Lok Sabha on Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill was unacceptable. Some of the opposition members even stood atop the desks of the table office and (Lok Sabha) Secretary General. Some Congress members also conveyed that there was no need for a debate on pollution. That is why the issue could not be taken up for discussion,” PTI quoted him as saying on the final day of the Session, December 19. However, members of the opposition have said that this is untrue.In a press conference on the same day, senior Congress leader and Member of Parliament Jairam Ramesh rejected the claim that disruptions by the opposition prevented a debate on pollution. He said that the Lok Sabha was adjourned indefinitely without taking up the issue, despite demands from the opposition benches, according to the Indian Express.