NEW DELHI: Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, on Friday called for an urgent, cross-party debate on the country’s worsening air pollution. The central government signaled its readiness to hold the discussion.“Most of our major cities are living under a blanket of poisonous air. Millions of children are getting lung disease. Their future is being destroyed. People are getting cancer. Older people are struggling to breathe. This is an interesting issue because I’m certain that there will be full agreement between the government and us on this issue. This is not an ideological issue. Everybody in this house would agree that air pollution, the damage it is doing to our people, is something that we would like to cooperate on,” the Congress MP said.

“I think a good idea would be that we frame the discussion not on us saying what you have not done and not on you saying what we have not done, but simply saying that what are we going to do for the people in India in the future, what are the action steps that we need to take. So I would say that it would be an interesting experiment to see if instead of you blaming us and we blaming you, we can try and say on this one issue where we agree, there’s no disagreement, there we say, listen, let us just talk about the future of people of India,” he added.Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju said the government was willing to hold a discussion on the matter and that the Lok Sabha’s Business Advisory Committee can schedule time for it.Delhi continues to grapple with severe air pollution as a thick layer of smog settled over the city on Friday, pushing the Air Quality Index (AQI) to 332—firmly within the ‘very poor’ category. Pollution levels remained consistently high across the national capital, with 30 monitoring stations recording ‘very poor’ air quality. Conditions were even more alarming in Jahangirpuri, where the AQI touched 405, entering the ‘severe’ zone.