by Pankaj Yadav
NEW DELHI, July 2 (Xinhua) -- India's capital has taken various steps to curb rising levels of air, water and soil pollution, including promoting e-vehicle and wastewater treatment.
The city becomes a gas chamber during winters when air pollution reaches life-threatening levels. It has three mountains of garbage, each over 60 meters high, in North Delhi, South Delhi and East Delhi.
As a result of these huge garbage dumps, the quality of air, underground water and soil in the areas around them has deteriorated over the years.
On Saturday Delhi's Environment Minister Gopal Rai began a plantation drive under which, according to him, more than 3.5 million plants, particularly medicinal saplings, would be planted across the city during the Monsoon season in July and August.
During the plantation drive, people in Delhi would also be encouraged to take up "urban farming," in a bid to promote a culture of consuming home-grown vegetables and cut down carbon emission levels in the city.
The Delhi government is also promoting e-vehicles (EV), and the city ranks first among states in terms of the number of new EVs sold every year.
In April this year, the government announced a monetary subsidy on purchase of passenger e-vehicles, becoming the first state to do so across the country.
Earlier this year, Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia claimed that Delhi had emerged as the "EV Capital of India" within 18 months of the launch of the "Delhi Electric Vehicles Policy-2020", as the share of EVs in the total sale of vehicles was over 10 percent in Delhi.
"The share of EVs in the sale of new vehicles has increased from 1.2 percent in 2019-20 to 10 percent in February 2022," Sisodia told a press conference in March.
Apart from air pollution, Delhi also suffers from water pollution. The river Yamuna flowing through north and eastern parts of Delhi at times turns so polluted that it gets covered with white froth-like substance.
To check rising pollution levels in the river, the Delhi government has installed several sewage treatment plants on major drains. ■
