Environment minister Prakash Javadekar

NEW DELHI: Environment minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday said in Lok Sabha that India would take less time to clean up the air in the capital than the 15 years taken by Beijing to improve its air quality .

Replying to a discussion on ‘air pollution and climate change’, he said a mass movement was needed to tackle it. “It took Beijing 15 years. We will take lesser time,” he added.

Javadekar said he would steer clear of politics because pollution affected everyone. He correlated pollution and climate change and said 40% of India’s total power capacity would come from renewable sources before 2030. He also said India’s green cover had steadily increased, making it among the few countries to have achieved the standard, and claimed that five times more trees were planted in NCR in place of trees felled for constructing Delhi Metro.

Later, Javadekar and Aam Aadmi Party were engaged in a war of words on Twitter after AAP government sought to claim credit for the dipping pollution levels in Delhi in the last three years.

Referring to AAP’s claims, Javadekar said AAP had “crossed all limits of hypocrisy” and clarified that all credit for reducing pollution should solely go to the Narendra Modi government. He also said the Delhi government, led by CM Arvind Kejriwal “delayed Metro Phase-IV and did not pay its share for Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways”.

With Delhi polls around the corner, state BJP chief Manoj Tewari also asked what should be done to a chief minister (Kejriwal) who wilfully decided not to follow the Centre in its efforts to curb pollution.

Earlier, Speaker Om Birla urged the government to call a special session on pollution in which the House would unanimously pledge to ban single-use plastic. “This will send a good message to the world and will be for the good of India’s 130 crore people,” he said.

In Rajya Sabha, BJP and AAP locked horns with the Centre accusing the Delhi government of “creating hype” on pollution due to “political reasons”. “The state government is creating hype for political reasons,” minister of state for agriculture Kailash Choudhary said.In the House, while Goel raised the issue of “poor quality and unsafe water” in Delhi, AAP's Sanjay Singh countered him.

