The World Health Organisation (WHO) has pegged air quality in most cities worldwide below its guidelines for safe levels, but India appears among the worst.

According to the UN agency’s latest pollution data, Delhi (not Beijing) tops the list of most polluted cities. Among the world’s 20 most polluted cities in the world, 13 are in India. Of the 13, three are in Punjab: Amritsar (no. 14), Ludhiana (no. 15) and Khanna (no. 20).

In a unique judgment, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has upheld a Punjab Government’s move to dispense with the right to submit objections to acquire land in the 1990s for setting up World-Bank-

Fog Hours Have More Than Doubled

New Delhi: Days are becoming colder in the month of January in the capital in recent decades and pollution could be playing a role in forcing the trend, warn experts. In terms of day temperatures, January this year is in line to be the coldest in a decade and third coldest since 1947. It will also be the fifth consecutive year when Delhi’s average maximum temperature in January has remained below the normal of 20.8 degrees Celsius.

To keep the Golden Temple environs pollution-free, the state government will soon install an ‘air control monitoring station’ worth Rs 1.5 crore at the shrine.

It will also set up a power substation to ensure uninterrupted supply in the shrine's vicinity to check the use of generators that lead to pollution. After a meeting with officials of the SGPC, PPCB, MC, PSPCL and the police here today, Deputy Commissioner Ravi Bhagat said the government, along with the SGPC, had decided to initiate various measures to check pollution in the shrine’s vacinity.

AMRITSAR: To check pollutants affecting the Golden Temple, Punjab government has announced several measures, including setting up of Rs 1.50-crore air control monitoring station near the shrine.

Main building of the Golden Temple in Amritsar is adversely affected due to pollution caused by industries, vehicles, generators, 'tandoors' (clay ovens) of restaurants around the shrine and burnin

Even as the state government is planning to make Amritsar a world-class city, it has miserably failed in the primary task of providing safe drinking water to its residents.

With no sewage treatment plant, the residents are forced to consume unsafe water and endure the foul smell emanating from the drains. No steps have yet been initiated by the state government or the local authorities to treat the polluted waters of the Tung Dhab drain, which passes through different parts of the city.

The major cities of Amritsar and Ludhiana are all set to acquire the internationally recognised bus rapid transport system (BRTS) with Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal giving his nod to re