Mumbai: Samajwadi Party’s Maharashtra president and MLA Abu Asim Azmi on Tuesday staged a symbolic protest against the city’s worsening air pollution by entering the Vidhan Bhavan on the second day of the Budget Session with a banner highlighting alarming AQI levels across Mumbai.
In a video shared by IANS, Azmi was seen wearing a protective face mask as he walked into the Assembly premises, holding a placard that questioned how long Mumbaikars would be forced to suffer due to hazardous air quality. The banner also displayed screenshots from AQI monitoring platform AQI.in, showing consistently high pollution readings in several parts of the city.
Azmi later took to X (formerly Twitter) to post a photograph of his protest along with a strongly worded message. In his post, he alleged that garbage dumping grounds and bio-waste processing companies are as responsible for the “poisonous air” in Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar and across Mumbai as the government itself.
He claimed that due to continuously rising pollution levels, the average life expectancy in his constituency has fallen drastically, and questioned whether the government values the lives of the poor.
“Demand for strict action and concrete steps from a government that ignores poor neighbourhoods and allows the poison of pollution to spread throughout Mumbai,” he wrote.
Azmi represents the Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar constituency in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly. His protest comes amid recurring spikes in Mumbai’s Air Quality Index, with several localities frequently reporting ‘Unhealthy’ and ‘Severe’ readings.
While the state government has previously announced measures to curb pollution, opposition leaders continue to demand stronger enforcement and long-term solutions to address what they describe as a growing public health crisis.
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