Delhi pollution: All schools to remain closed till Tuesday

New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has announced on Friday that all schools in the national capital will be closed till 5th November due to prevailing poor air quality. Kejriwal also urged school children to write letters to the Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana urging to take requisite action against stubble burning to curb the menace of air pollution in the national capital. He blamed that the smoke emanating from crop residue burning in the two states causes pollution in Delhi.

The Delhi chief minister also distributed anti-pollution masks to the school children as a part of the government plan to protect the children from air pollution.

According to SAFAR, the overall AQI of Delhi continues to be in the SEVERE category for the fourth consecutive. "The calm surface wind condition that prevails last two days over Delhi has led to strong surface nocturnal inversion and accumulation of pollutants. Also, the effective stubble fire counts of Northwest India (Haryana and Punjab) has increased from the previous day count of 1057 to 2396, as evident from SAFAR-multi-satellite fire product.

The stubble fire percentage contribution of Delhi's air quality which has touched the season's highest share of 35 percent on October 30 is predicted to be 27 percent for today and 25 percent on November 1. An improvement is expected by November 2.