NEW DELHI: The Centre will come out with a comprehensive plan around August 15, to reduce air pollution in 102 cities across the country in a time-bound manner. The plan, the National Clean Air Programme ( NCAP ), will have three timelines to gradually reduce pollution and bring it down by 70-80% from current levels in the next 10 years.

Under the timelines, air pollution in these cities- Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Allahabad, Varanasi, Kanpur, Jaipur, Patna and Hyderabad among others - will be reduced by 35% in the next three years, 50% in the next five years and 70-80% (as much reduction as possible) in the next 10 years.

"Earlier, we had two timelines (3 years and 5 years). But now, we'll put the third one (10 years) in the upcoming NCAP. It (the targets) is our expectations. We'll send it to states, asking them to frame their own city-specific plan to fullfil those expectations," said Union environment secretary CK Mishra.

He told TOI that the Centre would assist states in building capacities to reduce pollution level in tune with the prescribed timelines.

Asked about delay in bringing out the final NCAP, Mishra said, "We'll release it around August 15. It may be delayed for a few more days, but we are planning to do it around that time. There will be financial implication of such plan and therefore we have been working out those details."

The ministry is learnt to have also been waiting for the World Bank to finalise its assistance. Besides, it has held several round of discussions with the finance ministry on funding part of the NCAP. The World Bank has been working with many developing countries and development partners to improve their air and water quality.

The NCAP plans to tackle pollution from various sources (power plants, transport, industry, residential and agriculture sectors), increase number of manual air quality monitoring stations from 703 to 1,000 stations across the country, expand the network of the Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Stations (CAAQMS) and set up Air Information Centre for data analysis, interpretation and dissemination through GIS platforms.

"The NCAP will be a long-term time bound national level strategy to tackle the increasing air pollution problem across the country in a comprehensive manner. Its objective is to have a plan for prevention, control and abatement of air pollution," said an official.

The NCAP will have specific component on formulation of city-specific action plans for 102 non-attainment cities. A non-attainment city is considered to have air quality worse than the National Ambient Air Quality Standards .

On the basis of analysis of data for five years generated under the National Air Quality Monitoring Programme during 2011-15, the ministry had identified 94 cities as non-attainment cities.

"Now, eight more cities have been identified as polluted cities as per the WHO database. It is, therefore, proposed to take up source-apportionment studies in these 102 cities under the upcoming NCAP, besides taking up various pollution abatement measures", said the official.

The highest number of cities in the list is in Maharashtra (17) followed by Uttar Pradesh (15), Punjab (9), Himachal Pradesh (7), Odisha and Madhya Pradesh (6 each), Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan (5 each), Karnataka (4), Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Telangana (3 each), Gujarat, J&K, Nagaland and Uttarakhand (2 each) and Jharkhand, Delhi, Chandigarh, Meghalaya, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal (1 each).

