With Diwali and Kali Puja round the corner and the air quality in Kolkata bringing worries to the citizens during the changing weather, the state pollution control board has decided to do surveillance of difficult pockets including highrises using drones during the two days of the festival. The West Bengal Pollution Control Board is said to have targeted to distribute 20 drones to the six nonattainment cities in the state, including Kolkata, Howrah, Barrackpore, Durgapur, Haldia and Asansol. According to the chairman of WBPCB, Kalyan Rudra, till now, the seven specialized drones have been given to various police commissionerates of the six cities to do monitoring of difficult pockets like highrises.
The drones are to be deployed and used during the upcoming Kali Puja and Diwali for surveillance and air quality monitoring. The air quality and noise pollution during the upcoming festival is to be monitored at the integrated command centre. Considering the festival next week, a meeting of the officials of the state PCB, different commissionerates like Howrah, Kolkata, Barrackpore, Bidhannagar and Chandannagar and the representatives of the highrises was held at Pribesh Bhawan today.
The pollution control board urged the highrise representatives to take steps to minimize sound and noise pollution during the upcoming festival. Notably, as the city is gearing up for the festival of lights, the state government is putting efforts to curb the use of banned firecrackers and allow only green firecrackers for sale at the Bazi Bazaars. The WBPCB urged the citizens to identify the authenticity of green firecrackers by looking for the logo and QR code of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research – National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI).