Delhi this winter › Diwali 2026

Delhi after Diwali 2026: what the monitors recorded

By 7 a.m. on Monday 9 November, all 54 Delhi stations reporting valid data read above 200 on CPCB’s index, 50 read above 300 and 15 read above 400. The city figure was 368, Very Poor.

Written on 9 November 2026 from press reports of CPCB and DPCC data. CPCB issues each day’s bulletin at 4 pm, so the bulletin for 9 November did not exist when this was written.

The evening before

On Saturday 7 November, the day before Diwali, CPCB’s 4 p.m. figure for Delhi was 369, Very Poor. Hindustan Times reports that this was the highest for the day before Diwali since 2016, when it was 404, and that the index had climbed from 261 on 1 November. Between 10 and 11 a.m. PM2.5 averaged 295 micrograms per cubic metre across Delhi’s 59 stations, and 36 of them were above 250.

The evening window for green crackers opened at 8 p.m. In HT’s analysis of CPCB’s 15-minute readings, across the 55 stations that had reported, PM2.5 was 177 at 7.45 p.m., 208 at 8 p.m. and 289 at 10 p.m. Over the same hours on Friday it moved from 202 to 229. HT notes that this rise came inside the 8 to 10 p.m. window the Supreme Court allowed. By 9 p.m. nine stations were above 400, against none on Friday.

HT also names single stations: Punjabi Bagh, where PM2.5 went from 208 at 7 p.m. to 593 at 8 p.m., and Mundka, which read 718 (HT gives no time for that one). On farm fires, HT reports that INSAT-3DS counted 415 fire pixels in Punjab and Haryana on Saturday, 5.5 times its count on 1 November, and that the NASA count was 1.7 times its 1 November level. The two satellites detect fires differently, so only their growth can be compared.

The night

The Supreme Court allowed approved green crackers in two windows on 7 and 8 November, 6 to 7 a.m. and 8 to 10 p.m., according to Business Standard. The same report and The Hindu say crackers were burst well past 10 p.m. The Commission for Air Quality Management had already put Stage III of the Graded Response Action Plan in force across Delhi-NCR on 6 November.

At RK Puram, PM2.5 was 504 micrograms per cubic metre at about 8 p.m. and 924 by 9 p.m. After that the station showed nothing. At JNU, which kept reporting, it went from 161 at 8 p.m. to 786 by 11 p.m. DPCC recorded 760.99 at Akshardham at 11 p.m. (Outlook India; The Hindu).

India’s 24-hour PM2.5 standard is 60 and the WHO’s 24-hour guideline is 15, both in micrograms per cubic metre. These are hourly readings, so the chart shows how sharp the rise was and does not compare an hour with a day. Outlook India names RK Puram, Nehru Nagar, Mundka, Sonia Vihar and Dwarka as stations that stopped displaying readings for several hours after 9 p.m., and says no cause has been established for this year’s gaps. Delhi’s portal leaves a station that is not reporting out of the hourly city figure.

The two reports do not agree on RK Puram at 9 p.m. Hindustan Times gives 621 at 9 p.m. from CPCB’s 15-minute readings, and Outlook gives 924 by 9 p.m. The chart shows Outlook’s figure, and the difference could be a later reading inside the same hour. For scale, HT reports that last year at 2 a.m. on Diwali night PM2.5 averaged 1,137 across the 27 stations that reported through the night, up from 535 at 10 p.m.

On X, Binayak D (@VinayakD), who tags Hindustan Times, wrote that on Diwali night many monitors “stopped reporting PM2.5 just as readings neared 1,000”. At 1 a.m., the post says, only 13 of 39 were sending PM2.5 although they kept sending other readings, and last year 29 of the same monitors recorded more than 1,000. The article behind the post was not found, so those counts rest on the post alone.

The morning

At 7 a.m. the 54 stations with valid data split into 4 in the Poor band, 35 Very Poor and 15 Severe. The first two numbers come from the reported counts: all 54 read above 200 and 50 above 300, which leaves 4 between 201 and 300, and 15 read above 400, which leaves 35 between 301 and 400 (Business Standard).

The city figure of 368 sits below the worst stations because it is an average of them, and which stations are in it depends on which were reporting. Earlier in the night, readings quoted by the press ran from 337 to 418:

The neighbours

Bahadurgarh in Haryana read 389 at 7 a.m., higher than Delhi’s 368. Ghaziabad was at 366, Noida 340, Manesar 338, Faridabad 334 and Gurugram 316. Bhiwadi (300) and Greater Noida (293) were in the Poor band. Across the 288 cities with valid readings in CPCB’s 7 a.m. data, Khora in Uttar Pradesh was the highest at 400 and Aizawl the lowest at 19 (Business Standard).

The day after, in past years

In each of the 7 years from 2019 to 2025, CPCB’s bulletin figure for Delhi was higher on the day after Diwali than on the day before. The gap ran from 32 points (2024) to 148 (2021). Against Diwali day itself it was higher in 6 of the 7 years, and 10 points lower in 2022. The bulletin is a 24-hour figure to 4 p.m., so Diwali night falls inside the day-after figure.

This year the day before was 369 and Diwali day 376. The figure for 9 November is due after 4 pm today and is not estimated here. Hindustan Times printed the same comparison with 2015 to 2018 added, and its figures for 2019 to 2025 match the bulletin data used here, cell for cell. The earlier years are not charted because Delhi’s bulletin rested on far fewer stations before 2019.

Seven years is a small sample, and Diwali falls on a different date each year, with different weather. This shows what the bulletin recorded and does not say how much of any rise the fireworks caused. Diwali dates are the gazetted public holiday each year, and the table is in data/delhi-season.json.

Sources

• Delhi's air quality slips into 'severe' category morning after Deepavali, AQI at 404 (The Hindu, 9 November 2026)
• Delhi's post-Diwali air remains 'very poor', 15 locations record severe AQI (Business Standard, 9 November 2026)
• Delhi Air Quality Stations Stop Reporting On Diwali Night As Pollution Levels Spike (Outlook India, 9 November 2026)
• Delhi breathes worst air on Diwali eve in 10 years (Hindustan Times, 8 November 2026)
• RWAs in Delhi allege unchecked bursting of firecrackers (Hindustan Times, 8 November 2026)
• Post on monitors that stopped reporting PM2.5 on Diwali night (Binayak D (@VinayakD) on X, 9 November 2026)
• Air pollution over 50 times WHO limit in parts of Delhi as people defy ban on firecrackers on Deepavali (The Hindu, 9 November 2026)
• CPCB daily AQI bulletins, Delhi, for the Diwali day and the day after in 2019 to 2026: data/delhi-season.json and the 2026 bulletin file.

The post by Binayak D was checked against the platform’s embed service on 9 November 2026: it exists and carries the figures quoted. The Hindustan Times figures were typed from the paper’s print page and checked against its online articles on 9 November 2026. The three ANI posts in the table were checked against the platform’s embed service on 9 November 2026: each exists and carries the figure shown.