<span style="color: #222222;">Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that the Central Government has been taking all steps possible to combat air pollution in Delhi and North India and is working towards deploying all possible technological interventions towards that.<br />''<br />''Speaking at the 4th Roundtable Consultation on 'Clearing the Air – Driving central and state-level actions', the Minister stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has put a firm resolve to improve the air quality of 100 cities in next 5 years. The Ministry through its National Clean Air Programme is working in that direction with a target to achieve 20 to 30 percent reduction in PM 10 and PM 2.5 concentrations by 2024.<br />''<br />''Speaking on the peculiar nature of Air Pollution in Northern India especially Delhi-NCR, the minister said that the crisis of air pollution can be attributed to primary factors like industrial emissions, vehicular emissions, dust from construction and demolition sites.<br />''<br />''Speaking on the role of meteorology and geography, Mr Javadekar said that though Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai have similar population load and similar industrial and vehicular pollution levels, but Air quality index in Delhi has shot up to over 300 in the last few days. In Chennai, it is only 29, in Mumbai it is 140 and in Bangalore it is 45. The Minister said, this is due to the meteorological factors which must be appreciated and therefore when the wind speed and meteorology is unfavourable, more efforts must be made to better air quality.</span><br />