Delhi Police Crackdown on Largest Air Pollution Protest since Pandemic
Air Pollution 10/11/2025 •
Protestor raises clenched fist to a polluted sky at largest Delhi demonstration against air pollution since the pandemic.

DELHI, India – The Delhi police detained nearly 100 people Sunday evening in a protest against high levels of air pollution in India’s capital – which has consistently ranked as the biggest pollution hot spot in the world over the past month. 

The protest, one of the largest since the COVID pandemic and coincided with the opening of the COP30 UN Climate Conference in Brazil, on the other side of the planet. 

The protestors, including the elderly and children, were also pushed and in some cases carried by police into buses to be removed from the site where hundreds of people had gathered around Kartavya Path, the venue for India’s annual military parade, after police barred direct access to  India Gate, a war memorial and city landmark. Organizers said those detained were later released.  

The protests came on a day when the city ranked as the world’s most polluted – as it has for most of the past month. Over the last 30 days, Delhi dominated as the most polluted major city, ranking #1 for 594 out of 720 hours over the last 30 days – meaning it had the worst air quality over 80% of the time, IQAir told Health Policy Watch. 

By Monday, at the time of this story’s publication, pollution levels were hitting the highest marks this season, with PM2.5 at 340 micrograms/cubic metre (µg/m³), or more than 22 times the WHO 24 guideline level of 15 µg/m³. 

Delhi air pollution levels have steadily increased, over the past month reaching an all-time peak around noon on Monday.

Delhi residents have suffered high pollution for several weeks now as massive fires of crop waste in rural northern India send smoke drifting towards the capital, as cooler, dry weather exacerbates the haze and pollution emissions from household cooking and heating, traffic and dust. It’s a pattern that’s repeated annually for over a decade – despite the countless pledges by national and metropolitan authorities of cleanup plans. 

“Why has the Health Ministry been silent?” asked one protestor, Jasmine Singh, a mother of a 14 year-old. “There’s been no health advisory, no warning for parents, no guidance for schools. That’s why no one is wearing masks anymore, schools are holding sports days, and even marathons are being organised — as if all is well. Who will bear the responsibility of the damage that this will cause to our children?”

“Air pollution hurts everyone, but it hits people like us the hardest,” said Rukhsana, a waste worker from North Delhi. “We work outdoors all day, breathing in dust and smoke. Millions like us can’t afford air purifiers or masks — our lungs are our only protection, and even that is fading.”

Opposition leaders criticize police arrests 

Police block protestors from gathering around India Gate; dozens of people were detained and later released. 

Opposition leaders criticised the action of the police – in the city that is now controlled by Nahendra Modi’s BJP party since the last elections early this year.  Rahul Gandhi, head of the Congress Party, the largest opposition group in Parliament, tweeted “Why are citizens who have been peacefully demanding clean air being treated like criminals?” and called for decisive action on air pollution. 

Rekha Gupta, Delhi’s Chief Minister since the elections, did not make any comment in the immediate aftermath of the crackdown. 

Delhi’s Environment Minister, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, blamed the previous Delhi government led for a decade by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for doing no work to prevent pollution and claimed that the Gupta government is continuously taking steps to curb pollution.

The protests took place on Kartavya Path, where India’s military parade is held on Republic Day every 26 January. The initial call for protests was at India Gate, a short walking distance away. The memorial arch is a popular evening destination, especially on weekends, but police barricaded it ahead of the protests. 

“India Gate is not a protest site, as families come here and this is a route for VIPs,” the Deputy Commissioner of Police for the area, Devesh Kumar Mahla,  told reporters who gathered for the demonstration. 

Even so, extra police personnel were deployed to the area – and most of them were not wearing a mask despite the ambient PM2.5 levels registering at 150 micrograms µg/m³ or more – 10 times the WHO 24-hour guideline level.  

Police warn organizers of legal action 

Waste workers join protest over air pollution exposures.

Police have reportedly warned two of the organisers, Bhavreen Kandhari of Warrior Moms and journalist Saurav Das, of legal action. 

“The fact that we are out on the streets for something as basic as air shows how deeply the system has failed,” Kandhari, the mother of twins who suffered respiratory problems when they were growing up in Delhi, told Health Policy Watch. 

“No parent should ever have to protest for their child’s right to breathe clean air.  For years, pollution control boards have existed in name, but not in impact.” She said the state’s inability to fix this crisis calls for a structural shift, beginning with the creation of an independent air quality and public health commission that is autonomous, expert-led, and accountable to Parliament. See related story here: 

Mothers’ Message at WHO Air Pollution Conference: Behind Every Statistic is a Child Struggling to Breathe

The protests, initially organized about a week ago, were triggered by a further spike in pollution above already poor seasonal levels where rural crop waste burning, winter-time heating and weather conditions all combine into a ‘perfect storm’ of haze. See related story here. 

Delhi’s Air Pollution Rises While Trust in Official Data Falls

In the Indian landscape, air pollution protests of this size are rare. One of the earliest protests was in 2016. 

“​​This time, people are better informed about the lethal effects of air pollution and more agitated than ever that governments over the years have taken no cognizance of the enormity of the problem,” says Ravina Raj Kohli a co-founder of My Right To Breathe, which organised those early gatherings. 

Protests on eve of the UN Climate Summit underscores dual impacts of climate change and air pollution

Air pollution protestors at Delhi’s Kartavya Path, near the historic India Gate landmark.

The Delhi protest happened on the eve of the COP30 climate conference, which began Monday in Bélem, Brazil, the heart of the Amazon. 

It underscores the duality of the two issues, climate change and air pollution, which together exact a heavy health penalty for a tropical and vulnerable developing country like India.

Global emissions of greenhouse gases reached a record high of 57.7 gigatons in 2024, with India reporting the absolute highest increases in emissions over 2023, followed by China, Russia, Indonesia and the United States. 

In a business-as-usual scenario, temperatures are estimated to rise by 2.3°C to 2.5°C above pre-industrial times, that is about 150 years ago. See related story here.

The 2015 Paris Agreement had identified 1.5°C as the threshold for warming – but that was already breached temporarily last year and is now likely to be breached for some years in the future. See related story. 

UN Chief Calls Out ‘Deadly Negligence’ In Climate Action Ahead of COP30 Summit

A recent Nature paper, “Air pollution health and economic co-benefits of keeping warming below 2 °C in India”, drives home this point. It’s been co-authored by nine researchers from five countries, and ranging from institutions like International Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT) to the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. 

The study shows that climate actions in four of India’s largest states – Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Bihar – can achieve health benefits. Abatement in primary PM2.5 would contribute to avoidable deaths by two-thirds (64.5%), mostly from industrial, biomass burning, and domestic sectors across the Indo-Gangetic Plain in the north, and central states. 

That is about half a million deaths prevented per year, one of the authors, Prof Sagnik Dey told Health Policy Watch.

Prevental premature deaths (in green on right) annually in 2050 under a 2°C warming scenario (WS) as compared to business as usual scenarios now projected to breech 2.3°-2.5°C

Ahead of COP30, India reaffirmed its commitment to “safeguarding the architecture of the Paris Agreement”, and called for the next decade of climate action to be defined by implementation, resilience and shared responsibility. 

As protests go, November 9th’s India Gate pollution protest was a fairly short one lasting a couple of hours. But by opting for a police crackdown rather than engaging with protestors on what is essentially a bipartisan issue of public health, it could jeopardise any political capital the government may have on the air pollution crisis. 

Or it could mark a fresh start to implement genuine clean air action plans. 

Image Credits: Chetan Bhattacharji, IQ Air, Chetan Bhattacharji/HPW, Nature – 4.11.2025 .

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