Pollution monitor at TERI Gram
Gurgaon: The city’s air quality network is being recalibrated to correct overlapping readings from the Aravali belt. The air monitoring station at Teri Gram will be relocated to Bhondsi to record pollution levels from a different land-use zone rather than replicating data from Gwalpahari.At present, the city has five air monitoring stations at Vikas Sadan, Teri Gram, Gwalpahari, Sector 51 and Manesar.“TERI Gram and Gwalpahari stations lie barely a kilometre apart along the Aravalis, often recording similar pollution trends. Moving one of them to Bhondsi, a peri-urban stretch with mixed residential and semi-rural activity, is expected to plug a key gap in how the city’s air is currently measured.
The relocation is being carried out alongside an expansion plan under which five new real-time monitoring stations will be installed by July-end, taking Gurgaon’s total network to 10,” said Akanksha Tanwar, HSPCB regional officer, Gurgaon.However, experts cautioned that the relocation could also influence how the city’s overall air quality is reflected in official data. “The relocation of the station to Bhondsi may lead to an apparent reduction in city’s average pollution levels, without reflecting a true improvement in urban air quality.
This shift risks underrepresenting pollution exposure in core urban areas. To ensure more accurate assessment, urban green sites should be treated as background locations, while peripheral and urban influenced stations should be used to represent the city’s average pollution levels,” said Manoj Kumar, air analyst at CREA.The city’s current air monitoring grid covers roughly 732 sq km. Officials say this sparse spread leaves large parts of Gurgaon, especially newer sectors and fringe areas, outside air quality assessment.
The gaps in monitoring have surfaced sharply in the past. In Oct last year, three of the city’s four stations — at Gwalpahari, Teri Gram and Sector 51 — went offline due to technical snags and delayed calibration, leaving Vikas Sadan as the only functional station.
The outage had skewed Gurgaon’s AQI to a “moderate” level despite visible smog conditions, raising concerns over the reliability of air quality data during peak pollution periods.Moreover, a TOI report had earlier flagged that several monitoring stations are surrounded by dense tree cover, and in some cases recorded incomplete pollutant data, leading to unusually low AQI averages. Experts had then pointed out that limited stations combined with locations and missing data could distort Gurgaon’s overall pollution profile.Under the new plan, HSPCB will set up stations at Tau Devi Lal Park, Leisure Valley Park, WTP Chandu, STP Jahajgarh and STP Dhanwapur.
The sites have been selected to represent a mix of residential, green and utility-linked zones.TOI reported earlier that a CAQM panel called for a denser and more scientifically distributed monitoring network across NCR. The panel recommended a grid-based model of one station per 25 sq km in major cities.Even with the planned additions, Gurgaon’s network will fall short of the recommended benchmark. By the grid-based model, a city of this size would require around 29 stations, nearly three times the proposed count.
The gap becomes clearer when compared with Delhi, which operates around 40 stations across 1,483 sq km, enabling far more granular tracking of pollution patterns.“Expanding the monitoring network to ten stations is a step toward making Gurgaon’s air quality data more scientifically robust. Relocating stations to avoid duplication and intentionally placing new ones in residential zones, rather than just ‘green islands’, is crucial.
For data to be actionable, it must reflect the actual exposure levels of the citizens where they live and work, not just where the air is cleanest.
Measuring the air quality is the first step towards taking directed actions to improve it. We anticipate stricter actions on cutting down on emission sources in the city once these stations are up,” said Sunil Dahiya, founder and lead analyst at think-tank Envirocatalysts.Guidelines by CPCB also indicate that cities with populations between 10 lakh and 50 lakh should have multiple continuous and manual monitoring stations to ensure representative data. Gurgaon, with a population exceeding 15 lakh, has repeatedly been flagged for limited spatial coverage.Officials said the twin steps, relocating a redundant station and adding new ones, will make the network more representative. But experts said the current plan should be seen as a course correction rather than a complete fix, with gaps in high-exposure areas likely to persist.
