Delhi pollution control centre: What it tracks and what residents can see

Delhi’s new pollution-monitoring control centre will track air-quality readings, construction-site dust, road-sweeping machines and enforcement teams around the clock. Its AI-assisted analysis is intended to flag pollution hotspots and help officials decide where to act. For residents, the confirmed new service is a portal for sharing pollution concerns, suggestions and clean-air initiatives. Existing public services provide air-quality readings, but the government has not announced a public version of the control centre’s operational dashboard.

Chief Minister Rekha Gupta inaugurated the Delhi Pollution Control Committee’s Integrated Command and Control Centre on October 1, 2026, at the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation IT Park in Shastri Park. The centre is designed to combine monitoring data, complaints and inspection reports so that officials can identify a problem, send it to the responsible department and check the response. Staff will work in shifts to keep it operating 24 hours a day, including through the winter pollution season.

What will the centre monitor?

The system will bring together readings from Delhi’s air-quality monitoring stations and compare them with data from previous years. Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said that analysis would help officials identify local pollution patterns and likely hotspots. That is a tool for targeting inspections and other action; it should not be read as a claim that AI can determine the exact source of every rise in pollution.

More than 700 construction sites, each measuring over 500 square metres, are being monitored using CCTV and AI-enabled systems. Sirsa said that if a site’s PM10 reading rises, the relevant department and the site owner will be alerted. PM10 refers to airborne particles with a diameter of 10 micrometres or less. The alert is meant to prompt a closer look and corrective action at the site, rather than serve by itself as a public finding that a particular operator broke the rules.

The centre will also follow the location, routes, distance covered and operating hours of GPS-equipped mechanical road sweepers. That gives officials a way to check whether machines are working in their assigned areas, rather than relying only on deployment schedules. GPS-equipped vehicles will likewise allow the centre to follow enforcement teams sent to pollution hotspots.

Delhi plans to deploy 78 subdivision-level teams for monitoring and enforcement this winter. Teams known as Vayudoot will inspect problems including road dust, open burning and construction-related pollution, with body cameras feeding information back to the centre. The government has also described plans to connect automatic number-plate recognition cameras to its vehicle pollution-certificate enforcement effort. That proposed integration is separate from the construction-site and road-sweeping functions described as operating at the launch.

How is the analysis meant to lead to action?

The government’s operating model is to detect a possible problem, analyse the available information, assign a response and verify what happened afterward. A rise in a reading or a pattern in camera footage can draw attention to an area; complaints and field inspections add information that officials can use before and after sending a team. The centre is therefore an operations hub, not a new air-quality sensor at every street corner. Whether it improves conditions will depend in part on how promptly departments investigate alerts and complete the work they are assigned.

What can residents access or submit?

Alongside the centre, Gupta launched a public-participation service described as a Jan Suggestion portal. Residents can share suggestions, describe pollution concerns and report examples of work being done to reduce pollution. The government says complaints submitted through the service can be considered for action and useful ideas can inform its response.

The Green Delhi public portal’s Jan Sujhav/Sahyog form lets a resident identify a ward or locality and select concerns such as traffic emissions, road dust, construction dust, industrial emissions or open burning. It also provides space to describe the issue, propose a solution and upload supporting photos, documents, video or audio. Those are submission features; the form does not establish that residents can watch the control centre’s CCTV footage, view its AI assessments or follow every enforcement vehicle live.

For air-quality information, residents can already consult publicly available readings through Delhi Pollution Control Committee services and the Central Pollution Control Board’s air-quality platform. Those readings should not be confused with access to the new centre’s full internal dashboard. Officials have not specified a public release schedule for its hotspot assessments, inspection footage or case-by-case action reports.