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Adamant to hold anti-environment Amarnath Yatra
#IndiaNotSeriousToPreserveEnvironment
Islamabad, June 05 (KMS): As World Environment Day is being observed on 05 June annually, air pollution crisis has touched extreme levels in India.
A report released by Kashmir Media Service on the World Environment Day, today, maintained that major cities in India continue to face catastrophic levels of pollution.
It pointed out that as per IQAir, a Swiss group that measures air quality levels based on the concentration of lung-damaging airborne particles known as PM2.5, in its 2020 World Air Quality Report, which gathered data for 106 countries, says that of the world’s most polluted 30 cities, 22 are in India. It said that New Delhi was most polluted capital of the world.
Prolonged exposure to PM2.5 can lead to deadly diseases, including cancer and cardiac problems.
In 2020, New Delhi’s average annual concentration of PM2.5 in a cubic meter of air was 84.1, the study said, making it the 14th most polluted city in the world.
A recent study by Greenpeace Southeast Asia Analysis and IQAir rvealed that air pollution caused an estimated 54,000 premature deaths in New Delhi in 2020.
Another study published in The Lancet, world’s oldest and best-known general medical journal, found that air pollution contributed to 1.7 million premature deaths in India.
Despite an 11% reduction in the annual average of PM2.5 levels due to nationwide coronavirus lockdown curbs imposed last year, India emerged as the world’s third most polluted country.
The KMS report said, “For India, there is nothing to celebrate on World Environment Day. India is ignoring the message of World Environment Day by annually holding big Hindu Amarnath Yatra in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir. India is adamant to hold annual Amarnath Yatra despite having proven harmful for IIOJK’s environment. Modi’s decision to allow lacs of Hindus to visit the Amarnath Cave is an environmental disaster in the making in the territory,” it said.
The report deplored that Modi is ignoring threats that the huge Amarnath Yatra poses to fragile environment of occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Massive Annual Amarnath yatra can become a ‘Corona super spreader’ in IIOJK just as Kumbh Mela proved in India,” it added.
