All air quality monitors defunct - Why Gurugram is concerned about its AQI accuracy?

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Gurugram, one of the most polluted cities in India, has not had any real-time air quality data for the last 11 days. The only working air quality monitoring station, located in Gwalpahari and operated by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), stopped recording data on July 13, The Times of India reported.

Since then, not a single government-operated station has been reporting the Air Quality Index (AQI), leaving residents and authorities without crucial information.

The air quality station in Sector 51 stopped functioning in April, the one run by TERI stopped in March, and the Vikas Sadan station has been offline since January. Now, with the Gwalpahari station also offline, Gurugram is in a complete data blackout.

The absence of air quality data has serious consequences. Pollution control agencies can no longer monitor harmful pollutants like PM2.5 and PM10, which are crucial indicators of how dangerous the air is.

Without this data, authorities can’t take emergency actions such as enforcing the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), and health advisories cannot be issued. For people suffering from asthma, heart disease, or other respiratory conditions, this lack of information makes it harder to protect themselves, TOI reported.

"Monitoring and availability of air quality data is the first step to improve air, and it is even more critical for a city like Gurugram, which sits in one of the most polluted airsheds globally. HSPCB, CPCB and IITM must urgently coordinate to resolve tendering delays and restore the system. Pollution control efforts need to be data-driven," TOI quoted Sunil Dahiya, founder and lead analyst at Envirocatalysts, as saying.

Manoj Kumar from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) noted that the most polluted months of the year are just around the corner. “Timely data and public warnings are essential,” he told TOI.

IMD's VK Soni, responding to the shutdown of Gwalpahari, said, "Some parameters at the station started showing abnormal values, likely due to the sensor malfunction. As a precaution, CPCB had asked us to stop data transmission until the issue is completely resolved. We have identified the problem and are working to fix it. The station should be back online shortly."

A recent report by CREA ranked Gurugram as India’s fifth most polluted city in the first half of 2025. The average PM2.5 level was recorded at 75 µg/m³, 15 times higher than the World Health Organization's safe limit of 5 µg/m³. The report also marked January 19, 2025, as Gurugram’s ‘overshoot day’, the point at which the city had already consumed its annual air pollution quota according to WHO standards. Even if pollution dropped to zero after that day, the yearly limit would still be breached.