GRAP III Comes into Effect Day After Delhi’s Air Monitoring Blackout
New Delhi: A day before authorities implemented Stage III of the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap), Delhi’s air quality monitoring network collapsed on Monday (November 10), leaving residents without official data even as a thick layer of smog blanketed the city.
The Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB's) website and Sameer app remained inactive for most of the day, only resuming late at night around 10 pm when the Air Quality Index (AQI) showed 391 and after two hours it was 398, "the season's worst reading yet and within the "severe" category," Hindustan Times reported.
As per the report, the Sameer app remained frozen at 345 throughout the day. The CPCB's daily bulletin was uploaded at around 11 pm instead of its usual 4 pm slot. The bulletin noted an AQI of 362, highlighting what the AQI was at 4 pm – HT calculated Delhi’s 24-hour average AQI for the period ending Monday at 4 pm using CPCB’s methodology.
According to the HT report, the number of monitoring stations recording PM2.5 and PM10 – the season’s key pollutants – fell sharply from about 34–37 in the morning to just 27 by noon. After 12 pm, all the stations stopped transmitting data for all eight tracked pollutants, except for one brief hour when a single station reported figures.
Notably, the blackout occurred during the afternoon, precisely when the haze grew thicker and residents across the capital noticed worsening air quality. Officials reportedly attributed the nationwide outage to server problems affecting all 562 monitoring stations. Only four air quality stations from across the country were transmitting data to CPCB’s website at 5.30pm on Monday. By 6.30 pm, 66 stations were transmitting data, roughly half by 8pm. However, Delhi’s bulletin remained unpublished past 9 pm.
Monday’s breakdown was the third major data outage this season. On October 26, updates were suspended for 11 hours, between noon until 11 pm, pushing the release of the national bulletin to 10.45 pm. On October 27 also there was a 12-hour disruption.
On Tuesday, authorities in the national capital implemented Stage III of the Grap with immediate effect as 34 of the city’s 39 active stations recorded ‘severe’ AQI levels at 7 am. Bawana recorded an AQI of 462, Wazirpur 460, and both Mundka and Punjabi Bagh 452.
Under Grap III, non-essential construction, stone crushers, and mining activities are banned. Classes up to standard five must adopt a hybrid learning model and use of BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel four-wheelers in Delhi and neighbouring NCR districts are also restricted, with exemptions for persons with disabilities, news agency PTI reported.
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