MUMBAI, Dec. 23 -- A five-member committee, appointed by the Bombay High Court (HC) on November 28 to monitor the implementation of pollution-control measures across Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, has concluded that most construction, demolition, industrial and roadwork sites are guilty of not complying with existing guidelines, despite the rules being in place. The report was presented to the HC on Monday by the committee, which had visited 36 sites. The team also highlighted that Air Quality Index (AQI) monitors installed at construction and infrastructure sites are not integrated with any official pollution measuring system of the municipal corporations or the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB). The division bench of chief justice Shree Chandrashekhar and justice Gautam Akhand had set up the committee, entrusting it with the task, after hearing a suo-motu public interest litigation (PIL) on November 28, by senior advocate Darius Khambata and advocate Pooja Thorat, who had pointed out that the AQI of the city had worsened and crossed 300 at the time. The lawyers told the court that the guidelines issued by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the MPCB to curb air pollution and maintain ambient air quality in the city were not being complied with and that most of the construction and infrastructure sites did not have monitoring devices to track air pollution in the area. They added that out of around 1,000 construction sites in the city, only 400 had monitoring devices installed of which 117 were actually functional. Following the HC order, the committee visited 36 sites across Mumbai and Navi Mumbai and found most of them failing compliance measures (see box), mandated through comprehensive 29-point SOPs by BMC, and circulars and regulatory instructions by MPCB. It also added that the monitoring spree was intensified in some spots only after the HC hearing, and again after the air pollution levels reached extreme levels, "which was reactive rather than proactive". "This is evident from the fact that whenever the committee received inspection data - including stop work notices issued and/ or inspection carried out just prior to the committee's visit - it was primarily from the period of a few days prior to the committee's visit to a concerned area or site," the committee said in the report. The report also underscored that many pollution control devices and sensor-based AQI monitors were installed at sites without verifying their model, functionality or coverage, and that display monitors at all places were within the sites and not visible to anyone standing outside. "The collection of readings of AQI monitors can be done only in a manual manner, by visiting the concerned site and there is no centralized system in place either by BMC or MPCB that receives, stores and monitors the readings in real-time, which the team observed is necessary for continuous monitoring and compliance," it added. The AQI sensors, it was found, were located in the corner of many sites without taking into consideration the size of the site and height of the buildings being constructed. For example, there were sites seen spread over 10 acres with only one sensor placed at the corner or entry point, the report underscored. In many sites where buildings over 50 floors were under construction, a sensor was seen placed at the ground level on the corner or entry point of such a site. The committee recommended an integration of AQI data in real time at the concerned construction sites with official systems to monitor air pollution levels at the sites accurately. The body has concluded that the current mitigation measures, such as the use of water sprinklers, fogging, and smog guns, are deployed in an ad hoc or cosmetic manner. Additionally, vehicles carrying demolition waste to unloading points were not seen covered nor did they have tracking systems installed on them, as mandated by the guidelines. Municipal road cleaning activities themselves are contributing to dust generation, with sweeping (manual and mechanical) often spreading particulate matter rather than suppressing it with the support of wetting or containment measures, the report noted....