Air pollution crisis finally in focus ahead of tight Delhi election
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India’s capital of over 33 million people has long suffered from toxic air but it has never really registered as a key political issue. That’s changing this election season, as Stuti Mishra reports from Delhi. Vibha Chawla never paid much attention to air pollution. But when her elderly mother almost died of a severe coughing fit during the Diwali holidays late last year, she decided to act.
![[A blanket of air pollution seen over Delhi in northern India on 14 November]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/11/14/08/1-NASA-Delhi-NOV.jpg)
Chawla, a 50-year-old resident of Delhi’s affluent Siri Fort area, barged into a meeting where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was preparing its manifesto for the upcoming election in the capital, where she says she was one of the few voices to raise the issue of air pollution.
![[People exercise at Lodhi gardens on a cold smoggy morning in New Delhi]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/23/11/GettyImages-2184698061.jpg)
“I stood up and said, ‘We’re choking here and no one is talking about it’. Some people nodded, but I could tell most just didn’t care,” she tells The Independent. Chawla, wasn’t surprised – although much of northern India remains blanketed in a toxic haze for months every year, pollution has rarely been a major issue in elections in India. But with Delhi going to the polls for important state assembly elections on 5 February, things are changing, and air pollution is finally finding its way into political debates and manifestos. Politicians going door-to-door to ask for votes are being forced to answer questions about the toxic air that continues to surround the city.
![[A man feeds seagulls in the waters of river Yamuna engulfed in smog in Delhi]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/23/11/GettyImages-2183999848.jpg)
But the solutions they are promising, experts say, barely scratch the surface of the problem. The city, home to some 33 million people, has long struggled with hazardous air. The air quality index this winter repeatedly rose above 1,000, more than 15 times the level considered safe by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
![[Commuters wait for a bus on a polluted Delhi morning]](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2015/12/10/19/pollution.jpg)
