Gurgaon: Faridabad has climbed 33 places in Centre’s clean-air assessment in three years, but the city’s latest pollution data raises a question over what the improved ranking actually reflects.The city moved from 47th in the 2023 Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan to 21st in 2024, 19th in 2025 and 14th this year, scoring 179.7 out of 200 among cities with populations above 10 lakh. The latest results were released on Monday.However, the improvement in Faridabad’s ranking does not represent a similar improvement in ambient air quality. The city’s annual average PM10 concentration increased from 153 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m³) in 2024-25 to 176 µg/m³ in 2025-26, against the national annual standard of 60 µg/m³, according to govt data accessed by TOI. The latest level is nearly three times the permissible limit.The apparent mismatch lies in how Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan is scored. It is not a simple ranking of cities by pollution concentration, but an assessment of how well cities implement their city-specific clean-air action plans — measures addressing sources such as road dust, waste burning, construction and demolition dust, vehicular emissions and industrial pollution. Actual improvement in PM10 levels is only one component of the score; the bulk of it comes from implementation of source-control measures.For Faridabad, then, the new ranking presents a more complicated picture than a 33-place rise suggests. Its score has improved sharply, even as its annual PM10 concentration moved in the opposite direction last year.The gap comes against the backdrop of substantial unspent funds for clean-air measures. Faridabad had utilised Rs 84.3 crore of the Rs 138.9 crore released under NCAP, leaving Rs 54.6 crore unspent, according to govt data reported by TOI in July.The survey is an assessment of the 130 cities covered under National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), not a ranking of every city in India — and Faridabad is Haryana’s only NCAP city.Faridabad was included in NCAP as a non-attainment city after its air quality failed to meet national ambient air-quality standards during the 2011-15 period used by Centre to identify the programme’s original cities. Gurgaon was not included because it met the standards during that baseline period.Gurgaon’s absence from the ranking should not be read as evidence that its air is cleaner than Faridabad’s — the two cities are assessed under different frameworks. Gurgaon, for instance, recorded an annual PM10 concentration of 186 µg/m³ in 2024, according to a later analysis, despite not being part of the NCAP non-attainment list. More broadly, other heavily polluted cities in Haryana lie outside the NCAP survey altogether. A city’s absence from the ranking is not a clean-air certificate, only a sign it isn’t part of the 130-city assessment framework.Faridabad’s latest score of 179.7 puts it ahead of Delhi, which ranked 21st. Experts said a city may perform better on implementation indicators while still experiencing elevated pollution levels due to factors such as regional pollution transport, meteorological conditions, growth in emissions or the time lag between interventions and measurable air quality improvements.“If a city can achieve a significantly higher SVS ranking while annual PM10 concentrations remain substantially above National Ambient Air Quality Standard, it prompts a discussion on whether the current assessment framework sufficiently rewards outcomes in addition to actions. In that sense, the existing SVS ranking framework can only be viewed as an indicator of a city’s efforts, systems, and implementation progress rather than as a direct measure of ambient air quality. Going forward, the SVS guidelines could consider assigning weight to sectoral emission reductions achieved, alongside progress in implementing mitigation actions across sectors. Such an approach would encourage cities to focus on root cause-oriented interventions that deliver measurable improvements in air quality,” said Jinitha Varghese, programme manager at research firm EnviroCatalysts.
