🚨 GRAP FAILURE | PUBLIC HEALTH NEGLIGENCE – GURUGRAM 🚨
(Long, but this concerns public health—please read)
Just four days ago, the
@DC_Gurugram publicly stated on X (screenshots attached) that strict implementation, monitoring, &inter-departmental coordination would be enforced to control air pollution. With due respect, ground reality in Gurugram reflects a serious gap between statements and action.
A waste fire broke out in Sec 23A on 6 January, emitting dense toxic smoke. Although fire services attended, the smoke could not be fully extinguished due to the biomass composition of the waste, and it continued to smoulder for days. This incident occurred in the middle of a marketplace, adjacent to residential colony sector 23 A , Gurugram , directly exposing residents to ground-level pollution.
Winter conditions trapped emissions close to the surface, causing biomass smoke to mix directly into the breathing zone. Residents—particularly those with respiratory ailments—experienced severe health impacts. This is precisely why large-scale biomass burning is criminalised and why GRAP mandates strict prevention, especially during adverse meteorological conditions.
Despite repeated CAQM advisories to NCR district administrations to anticipate and prevent such pollution episodes, waste burning remains a known, rampant, and recurring practice in Gurugram, as repeatedly documented by citizen groups.
A responsive administration would have identified recurring hotspots, corrected sanitation and waste-handling practices with
@MunCorpGurugram and
@ulbharyana Haryana, ensured biomass processing and waste segregation, and acted on repeated citizen representations. Instead, these incidents repeat year after year, indicating systemic administrative failure or one can say normalising air pollution and GRAP as a routine matter.
During the declared
#GRAP period, the same site witnessed repeat waste fires on 13 and 16 January, with another major fire barely 200 metres away. Residents repeatedly contacted MCG supervisors and wrote to the Commissioner MCG,stating severe सांस में तकलीफ़ (
#breathingdistress) faced by hundreds of families amid Very Poor to Hazardous AQI. Yet no effective deterrent action followed, and the original site continued to smoulder.
📌 Please see the attached tweet thread for evidence.
MCG, GMDA and DC records would also reflect
#historical,
#recurring (
#intentionally set ablaze)
#wastefires across Sector 23A ( kindly check submissions by
@Bhawani4Gurgaon & Ms
#NeeruYadav including leaf-litter burning in Devilal Park. This is not a one-off lapse but a chronic failure of monitoring and enforcement of GRAP provisions in Gurugram.
Despite a full administrative machinery—from field staff to senior officers, police, municipal engineers, commissioners, and the DC—accountability remains absent.
This constitutes a clear failure of GRAP enforcement and gross negligence of public health.
We therefore demand that
@CAQM_Official:
1.Treat this as a documented case study of GRAP failure
2.Fix individual accountability and publicly name responsible officials
3.Initiate punitive action for negligence
4.Enforce zero tolerance for open dumping, waste burning, and repeated violations
There must be NO open dumps and NO waste fires—period.
Citizens are rapidly losing faith in GRAP and in the administration’s willingness to protect public health.
On behalf of:
CitizensForCleanAir
25,000 Gurugram signatories – CleanAirGurgaon
P.S.: Similar observations of recurrent waste🔥and open all through GRAP Oct'25 thr Dec '25 have also been recorded on GCER, Dhanwapur ward 7, Sadar Market, near Nawada sector 80-85, sector 102 ,Palam Vihar & many more area as well in MANESAR &FARIDABAD also reported innumerable waste fires, indicating that this is a city-wide enforcement failure, not a location-specific lapse. Waste FireData may also be sought from Fire Department.
@moefcc @PrinSciAdvGoI @barandbench @LiveLawIndia @mananverma