Delhi Police does little to enforce ban by SC

Nobody burst firecrackers in Delhi on Diwali. Nobody set off the rockets or bombs or sparklers that laced the air with noxious chemical pollutants and kept the city trapped in a deafening din all night.

- Hemani Bhandari

Nobody in the Capital is at fault for the bad air crisis the city now finds itself in. Or at least this is the version of events that the Delhi Police's absence of enforcement of the Supreme Court's ban would suggest - the force registered only 123 FIRS against those bursting firecrackers across the city; and five police districts did not register any cases at all.

The Delhi Police on Sunday chose to look the other way as residents across neighbourhoods thronged the streets, armed with firecrackers of all variety, setting them off in petulant disregard of directions by the Supreme Court and orders by the state government.

Delhi Police spokespersons declined to comment on the matter. Calls and text messages to Delhi Police commissioner Sanjay Arora received no response.

Official data shared by Delhi Police showed that officers in at least five of the city's 15 police districts-Rohini, North West, Outer, Outer North and New Delhi-did not register a single FIR for firecracker-bursting.

As a result, pollution monitors spent all of Sunday in deep red, with levels of PM2.5 (an ultrafine pollutant) in some areas surging more than 30 times above the safe limit. By 10pm on Monday, the 24-hour average air quality index (AQI) worsened into the "severe" zone, with a reading of 403.