Delhi AQI today: If you scroll through former IPS officer Kiran Bedi’s X (formerly Twitter) account, you’ll come across multiple posts highlighting Delhi’s worsening air quality, along with several labelled “Feedback post”. In her latest post, shared about 11 hours ago, she reposted a cartoon from Down To Earth magazine. The illustration shows two patients lying next to each other in a hospital. One, wearing an oxygen mask, says he inhaled toxic air with an AQI of 700 and asks what happened to the other. The second patient, badly injured, replies: “I was demanding clean air.”

She shared this post with a simple caption, “Another feed,” and added a hashtag “pollution”. 

Although the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) has now lifted GRAP III restrictions across Delhi-NCR following a marginal improvement in air quality, the national capital has continued to record AQI levels in the “severe” to “very poor” category this month. Today, Delhi woke up to an AQI of 385, which falls in the “very poor” range.

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With air quality across Delhi-NCR showing “no improvement,” Bedi, who previously served as the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, has urged the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to step in with “proactive” measures. In a post on November 27, she described the situation in the capital as both “agonising” and “depressing”.

Delhi AQI: ‘Agonising and depressing’

She went to say, “I live in Indirapuram, and the AQI is 587 right now. I have not sent my child to school in spite of the teachers’ messages. I have written a firm email to the principal. Whatever is in my area of control, I will do that.”

‘Please make Delhi healthy again’

In a previous post dated November 25, she shared how Delhi pollution has “severely” impacted her health. 

“A day punctuated by sneezing, a stuffy nose, and chest congestion with mucus cough, drains, energy through the day, with restricted mobility. No more walks in Lodhi Garden, Nehru Park, or the erstwhile Rajpath. Or enjoy the November sunshine?” she wrote. 

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In the next few lines, she urged PMO’s intervention to make “Delhi healthy again” and hold CMs of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, UP and Delhi accountable for Delhi’s “very poor” AQI. “This is my Delhi today, I loved so much and grew up in serving and patrolling the roads, nights and days. Only the much-awaited direct intervention of Hon’ble PM will reverse this steep deterioration. Please make Delhi healthy again.”

“We are leading very unhealthy lives,” she declared. 

‘It’s like COVID’

In a conversation with CNN-News18, she said that everyone – right from children to the elderly – is being severely impacted by the pollution. “Child is losing school, child is losing playing, and the elder is becoming captive in the houses,” she said.

She also shared that she recovered from a severe chest infection caused by the “very poor” air quality in the Delhi-NCR. “Last one, one and a half weeks I had a very severe chest infection myself. Okay. I’ve recovered only with a huge amount of immunity care. How many times did my body respond like this? What can you say, like what would you request the government, how you can, how you see that this can improve?”

“It’s like COVID. Either you’re a victim, or you are also a potential victim,” she warned, calling the current pollution levels an emergency that must be addressed as a priority.

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