‘No one is safe’

People are losing precious years of their lives due to pollution, India's Supreme Court said yesterday and slammed authorities for their failure to curb pollution in Delhi-NCR.

A bench of justices Arun Mishra and Deepak Gupta asked the Centre to call environmental experts, including from IIT, to the court within 30 minutes.

"Can we survive in this atmosphere? This is not the way we can survive," the bench said adding that the authorities have left the people to die.

The court said it will not tolerate this and will fix liability on the state governments.

"Delhi is choking every year and we are not able to do anything. Question is that every year this is happening," the bench said, adding, "It cannot be done in a civilised country".

It also took serious note of crop burning in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh and said it cannot go unabated every year, reported PTI.

The top court called the pollution in Delhi-NCR as atrocious and said no one is safe even inside homes. "It is too much. No one is safe even inside their house. It is atrocious," the bench said.

New Delhi banned half the Indian capital's private cars from its roads yesterday, reported AFP.

As smog levels exceeded those of Beijing by more than three times, authorities also parked a van with an air purifier near the Taj Mahal -- the iconic 17th-century marble mausoleum 250 kilometres (150 miles) south of Delhi -- in a bid to clean the air in its surrounds.