Recently, as Kolkata’s winter air quality slipped into the “very poor to hazardous” range, a Public Interest Litigation before the Calcutta High Court has drawn judicial attention to the city’s deteriorating pollution levels, seeking immediate and enforceable measures to protect the constitutional guarantee of clean air.
The petition has been instituted by Advocate Akash Sharma, a practising member of the Calcutta High Court, who has drawn the Court’s attention to alarming Air Quality Index (AQI) readings recorded on 2 January 2026. According to real-time data placed before the Court, Kolkata registered AQI levels in the range of 330–350, categorised as “very poor to hazardous”.
On the same date, Delhi recorded an AQI of around 200, while Mumbai stood at approximately 220. The plea traces the crisis to predictable winter pollution patterns and highlights that an earlier representation had already been addressed to the Chief Secretary of West Bengal, the Chairman of the West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB), and the Principal Secretary of the Environment Department, seeking pre-emptive measures through a structured Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).
The Petitioner contends that despite advance warning, the State failed to put in place any binding or time-bound mechanism to arrest the worsening air quality. In response to the November representation, the WBPCB informed the petitioner by email sent in November 2025 that it was “undergoing research and preliminary testing for implementing a software-based GRAP”. The PIL asserts that this response did not translate into any concrete action on the ground, as borne out by the persistent deterioration of air quality through December 2025. The plea characterises the recurring “very poor”, “severe” and “hazardous” AQI levels as a public health emergency and presses for judicial directions to ensure enforcement of existing environmental protections rather than the formulation of new policy.
While the matter is yet to be substantively heard, the petition places the issue squarely within the constitutional obligations of the State under Article 21 and Article 47 of the Constitution, emphasising the duty to safeguard public health and environmental conditions compatible with human dignity. The Court has been invited to examine whether continued inaction, despite prior notice and escalating data, warrants court-monitored compliance with statutory pollution control measures, particularly in an urban airshed as dense as the Kolkata, Howrah region.
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