Gurugram plans five new air-quality stations by December 2026

Gurugram’s Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) plans to expand the city’s air-quality monitoring network from three stations to eight by December 2026. The civic body has identified five new monitoring locations.

Municipal commissioner Pradeep Dahiya reviewed the preparations, directing civic departments and other agencies to speed up work against their 2026 targets and ensure equipment is available ahead of the Graded Response Action Plan period.

Road dust is central to the plan. MCG has marked 404.61 km as suitable for mechanical sweeping and currently operates 24 GPS-equipped sweeping machines, mainly between 9pm and 7am. The civic body says these machines can cover more than 600 km of four-lane roads each day; field staff keep daily logs and manually verify their work. Additional machines were targeted for deployment at identified dust hotspots by September 30.

MCG also has 40 water sprinklers, including units it can hire during GRAP, along with 10 truck-mounted and three tractor-mounted anti-smog guns. Of its 2,091-km road network, the corporation has identified 611 km for redevelopment. It has set a 396-km redevelopment target for 2026, and says 179.04 km has been completed so far, with 162 km meeting Commission for Air Quality Management quality standards.

Construction debris remains another pressure point on city roads. MCG says it can process 1,500 tonnes of construction and demolition waste a day and has activated 12 secondary collection points on its C&D waste portal. Between January 1 and August 31, it recorded 338,071 tonnes of waste being off-taken. The review also discussed web cameras for C&D waste monitoring, as directed by the Commission for Air Quality Management. Construction debris has continued to reappear on some Gurugram roads.

The corporation has also identified 31 short-term traffic-congestion hotspots for 2026. Work is complete at four, while projects at the other locations are underway. Under its intelligent traffic management system, 1,200 cameras are live at 218 locations, with another 2,722 cameras being installed at 258 locations in the second phase.