‘Cruel Joke’: Congress on Delhi’s cloud seeding project

New Delhi | Desk: The Congress party on Sunday strongly criticized the Delhi government's winter cloud seeding experiment to improve air quality. Congress General Secretary (Communications In-charge) Jairam Ramesh said that the Delhi government spent ₹34 crore on the experiment, but claiming "marginal improvement for a day or two in a limited area" after the experiment was a "cruel joke."

He said the project went ahead despite clear objections from three central expert bodies - the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and the India Meteorological Department (IMD). He also cited a report by IIT Delhi’s Centre for Atmospheric Sciences dated October 31, 2025, which said that cloud seeding would not make any major difference to Delhi’s severe air pollution.

Ramesh questioned whether the move was just to grab headlines when experts had already doubted its effectiveness.

His remarks came two days after Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa claimed that the Air Quality Index (AQI) had improved and denied any manipulation of data.

The opposition has repeatedly accused the government of altering AQI data to hide the true scale of Delhi’s pollution problem.