India’s toxic smog shrouds Taj Mahal, delays flights

NEW DELHI: Toxic smog obscured India’s famed monument to love, the Taj Mahal, as well as Sikhism’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and delayed flights today, becoming too thick to see through in several places.

The city of Lahore in neighbouring Pakistan ranked as the world’s most polluted in winter’s annual scourge across the region, worsened by dust, emissions, and smoke from fires burnt illegally 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 17th-century monument, while dense fog wreathed worshippers at the Golden Temple in Punjab, television images showed.

Delhi flights faced delays, with tracking website Flightradar24 showing 88% of departures and 54% of arrivals were delayed.

Officials blamed high pollution, combined with humidity, becalmed winds and a drop in temperature for the smog, which cut visibility to 300m at the city’s international airport, which diverted flights in zero visibility yesterday.

More patients flocked to hospitals, particularly children.

“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.