DELHI PRESS
Delhi Choked, the Monitors Went Blank at the Peak — and the Missing Readings Were Worse
The official number said 370. But through the worst hours of Diwali night, dozens of the monitors behind that number reported nothing at all — and the readings released a day late were worse.
The Story — Delhi woke on Monday, November 9, a day after Diwali, under thick smog: the city’s average Air Quality Index was 376 on Diwali day and 370 on Monday morning, with several stations in the ‘severe’ band above 400 and Stage III of the Graded Response Action Plan in force. Punjab recorded 1,152 farm fires on Diwali day, the season’s sharpest single-day spike.
Through the worst hours of Diwali night, dozens of Delhi’s 59 monitoring stations showed no PM2.5 readings at all in the Central Pollution Control Board’s record. When the Delhi Pollution Control Committee released the missing hourly readings on Monday evening, they showed 125 missing station-hours — every one above 1,000 µg/m³, peaking at 3,744 µg/m³ at Mundka at 2 a.m.
By Hindustan Times’ recalculation, the 24-hour AQI to 9 a.m. Monday would have been about 384, not the published 370. An unnamed government official attributed the gaps to technical glitches.
The Hindu group’s BusinessLine, carrying Bloomberg’s report, frames the night as a measurement failure on top of a health crisis: at least 44 of 59 stations failed to show particulate readings while PM2.5 topped 900 µg/m³ — over 60 times the WHO’s recommended level — and India’s official AQI scale, which ends at 500, cannot capture episodes this extreme. It closes on the structural point, quoting a Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air analyst: Delhi recorded just one ‘good’ air day in 2026, so the fix has to be year-round emission cuts, not episodic Diwali management. The party blame game does not appear in the piece at all.
The wire copy runs the morning straight, as a readings-and-forecast story: the haze, the AQI of 370 “almost in the ‘severe’ category,” the worst stations by number, the CPCB scale explained, and the Early Warning System’s forecast that air would slip into ‘severe’ and stay there for days, with unfavourable ventilation, vehicle emissions and stubble burning named as contributors. Notably, the wire treatment carries neither the political charges nor the missing-data controversy — the night is reported exactly as the official record shows it.
Times Network coverage frames the episode as a political confrontation and gives the BJP’s account the first and fullest hearing: Delhi minister Kapil Mishra’s claim, citing satellite data, that Punjab farm fires jumped from 125 locations on November 7 to 1,200 on Diwali day as a “premeditated conspiracy” against Delhi, with a demand that Punjab’s chief minister investigate and file FIRs; BJP MP Praveen Khandelwal echoes the deliberate-plot line and adds that previous administrations’ inaction is to blame. The opposition’s charges are carried inside that frame, as responses: Congress’s Pawan Khera asking why 25 of 39 stations recorded no PM2.5 readings between 2 and 3 a.m., and AAP’s Saurabh Bhardwaj counter-alleging that the BJP government manipulated figures by shutting stations and siting new ones in greener areas.
The issue — The fight is now over the record itself, not just the air: if readings disappear precisely when PM2.5 passes the monitors’ range, then the AQI, the GRAP triggers and the health warnings built on them all rest on an incomplete picture — the released data already lifts the night’s AQI from 370 to about 384.
What to watch — Whether the CPCB publicly explains the gaps station by station, whether the ‘technical glitch’ account survives the DPCC numbers, and whether any of the three parties’ charges — conspiracy, suppression or manipulation — produces an inquiry before the winter peak arrives.
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