00:00But there are more updates on this story.
00:03Today, Delhi woke up to its worst air since February.
00:07AQI above 300, on an average that is, it was much worse in other places.
00:11And the first very poor reading of the season.
00:14Jangir Puri touched 417.
00:16But just for perspective, last Friday after the rain, the same city was just 60.
00:23And today, the same day, our pollution figures have hit the poor levels.
00:29Because Supreme Court has said the Delhi NCR can burst crackers this Diwali.
00:35Green crackers only, they said.
00:38November 7th and November 8th, 6 to 7 in the morning and 8 to 10 at night.
00:43Nothing within 300 metres of the hospital, a nursing home, a health centre, an old age home, a school or
00:48a silent zone.
00:50On November 9th, the ban comes back, remember.
00:53Four days ago, Supreme Court had asked the centre in Delhi what they actually did after last year's permission.
01:00And let me quote the judge's words to you.
01:02It said that without enforcement, these orders become a mere mockery.
01:08Four days later, the permission has been granted again.
01:10And look at how we really got here.
01:13Because for 10 years now, Delhi has been banning and unbanning, banning and unbanning.
01:19Giving permission to crackers and then green crackers, then banning it again and then going back to green crackers, all
01:25at the same time.
01:27So over the next few minutes, let's look at the timeline of what exactly Delhi has done when it comes
01:32to crackers.
01:33We'll start with 2015.
01:35In 2015, three small children went to the Supreme Court in a petition led by a child named Arjun Gopal.
01:42They asked for a ban on firecrackers.
01:442016, Diwali AQI was again 4.31.
01:48Next day, 4.45, November 11th, the court suspended firecracker sale licenses across Delhi NCR.
01:572017, in September, the court lifted that order and called for a complete ban, an extreme step.
02:06Then 10 days later, for Diwali, it brings the sale ban back.
02:12Let's see, one Diwali without crackers, it says.
02:15But only selling is stopped.
02:18If you already have the crackers, you can continue to burn them.
02:21That was the order back in 2017.
02:24What were the figures then?
02:26Diwali, it was 3.19.
02:27The next day after Diwali, it was 403.
02:302018, now this is a big year.
02:32October 23rd, no total ban, says the court.
02:36Bursting from 8 to 10 at night.
02:39Only low emission green crackers.
02:41Barium salts out.
02:43One small problem, pollution board officials and traders said green crackers weren't even in the market yet.
02:50That year, when they allowed green crackers for the first time, on the day of Diwali,
02:54AQI was 281.
02:55The next day, it jumped to 390.
02:582019, the government's science labs roll out green crackers.
03:02Limited use in Delhi, it said.
03:04Police on grout struggled to tell them apart from the regular ones.
03:09Many still struggling.
03:122020 was COVID year, of course.
03:14Delhi banned all crackers from November 7th.
03:17The National Green Tribunal banned them across the NCR from November 9th, green crackers included.
03:22And that made, you know, difference, a little bit at least.
03:282021, complete ban in Delhi till the 1st of January.
03:332022, a ban came back again.
03:36A plea reached the Supreme Court.
03:37The court said, let people breathe fresh air and spend your money on sweets instead.
03:43In 2023, third straight year of the Delhi ban on the day of Diwali 2018 was the AQI.
03:51The best in eight years after rain, you know, days earlier.
03:57Next day, as crackers flew anyway, despite that ban, we almost touched again about 360 over there.
04:052024, there was a ban back again.
04:08Diwali day, 328.
04:09Supreme Court says the ban was hardly implemented and then it pushed the same ban across the whole NCR.
04:152025, this is where it gets dizzy.
04:19On the 3rd of April, a two-judge bench bans the crackers all year round across NCR.
04:26It refuses to exempt what is so-called green crackers.
04:30Come back, it says, when their pollution is down to the bare minimum.
04:35October 15th, a different bench relaxes it for Diwali.
04:38The reasoning?
04:39The ban hasn't stopped bursting and the smuggled conventional crackers do more damage than green ones.
04:45An honest word on those numbers really is that ban years and permission years both go up and down
04:53because wind and rain move the air too.
04:55The court itself recorded the AQI between 2018 and 2024 was not very different.
05:00Covid aside, of course, that was a different year.
05:03And crackers are not the biggest source, remember, of Delhi's winter pollution.
05:07Vehicles, dust, stubble do most of the work.
05:09Crackers land on top of it.
05:12All at once.
05:13We saw what happened with the Shaira in 2026.
05:16So what's the conclusion here?
05:17Ten years in, we still can't say what a ban really does or what a permission really does.
05:23Because neither has properly been enforced and then properly measured.
05:29Even at the time when the courts have banned, there have been ample bursting of crackers.
05:34Even when they said only green crackers, there were enough and more which were not green being burst.
05:40The implementation is the biggest question.
05:42And now we're trying it again.
05:45Let's see if that works.
05:46Let's see if that works.
