India's Taj Mahal Hides Becuase Of This!

Taj Mahal Hides Becuase Of This

SMOG was so dense in India that it covered the trademark symbol of love the Taj Mahal, Sikhism’s the Golden Temple in Amritsar and even led to cancellation or delay in several flights on Thursday.

Lahore in neighbouring Pakistan was rated the world’s most polluted city during Winter’s annual blight across the region today compounded by dust, emissions, and smoke from fires burnt in India’s farming states of Punjab and Haryana.

In the city of Agra, the Taj Mahal was barely visible from the gardens in front of the monument built in the 17th century, while the worshippers in the Golden Temple in Punjab were covered with the fog, TV pictures revealed.

Delhi flights were affected with, tracking website Flightradar24 indicating that 88% of the flights that took off and 54% that landed was delayed. Government alleged high level of pollution compounded by humidity, lack of wind and drop in temperature for smog that reduced visibility to 300 meters at city’s international airport which rerouted flights in zero visibility on Wednesday. Increased flows of patients, especially of children, visited hospitals.

“There has been a sudden increase in children with allergies, cough and cold … and a rise in acute asthma attacks,” Sahab Ram, a paediatrician in Punjab’s Fazilka region, told news agency ANI.

Weather experts said that Delhi’s minimum temperature was down at 16.1 degrees Celsius Thursday from Wednesday’s 17 degrees. Pollution was in the ‘severe’ category for a second day running, on a scale of air quality index sustained by the higher pollution committee that deems a score of between zero and 50 as ‘good’.

New Delhi air quality will remain in the ‘severe’ level on Friday, according to the earth sciences ministry before reducing to ‘very poor’ with the index averaging 300-400. Farm fires to clear fields in northern India have been rising this week touching nearly 2,300 on Wednesday from nearly 1,200 on Monday, according to the ministry website.