Two Nov. 3 pollution rankings gave Bathinda sharply different Air Quality Index (AQI) scores, while NDTV Profit’s description of India’s national scale complicates comparisons with official readings.
NDTV Profit reported Bathinda at 737 and Faridkot at 692. JagranJosh reported 1,124 for Bathinda and 801 for Faridkot. The four scores for those two cities exceed the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) published National AQI ceiling of 500; other entries in NDTV Profit’s list were below that mark.
CPCB’s National AQI categories run from Good at 0–50 to Severe at 401–500, with 301–400 classified as Very Poor. NDTV Profit presented category bands as India’s National AQI but labeled the 301–400 range “hazardous,” unlike CPCB. It did not identify the method or data source behind its city scores or give a reading time.
JagranJosh cited when updates were made and the reporting platform as possible reasons its Bathinda figure of 1,124 differed from another report’s 1,018. That explanation concerned those two Bathinda figures, not NDTV Profit’s 737 reading.
CPCB’s dashboard lists AQI at city and monitoring-station levels, and its methodology sets the overall score using the worst pollutant sub-index. NDTV Profit’s previous day’s ranking said its tracker used the U.S. AQI scale, but the Nov. 3 article did not explain how it generated the city scores. EconoTimes previously examined inconsistencies in NDTV Profit’s Nov. 2 AQI ranking.
