at a time when pollution levels in Delhi have reached alarming levels, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, which monitors pollution in the capital, says that it has neither the money nor the equipment to carry out its work. The Central Pollution Control Board ( cpcb) is supposed to have provided the money to set up air quality monitoring stations.

However, the cpcb chairperson Dilip Biswas says that they are not a funding agency. Whenever the committee needed money, the Centre provided it, he says. "If the committee comes up with a good proposal, all that the cpcb can do is to recommend it to the environment ministry for funding.'

The committee says that the grant it receives from the Delhi government is largely spent on salaries. Biswas says that the committee has enough money which it generates from the water cess it levies and is free to utilise it.