India AQI Trends — Year-over-Year by City

Is India's air getting cleaner? The national median is improving (8.5 AQI/yr better). But the national average hides huge variation — some cities have genuinely turned a corner under NCAP, others have held steady or worsened. Search any of 152 CPCB-covered cities for its full year-by-year chart, linear regression, and written analysis.

Source: CPCB station-level daily readings, 2016–2024. Cities with fewer than three years of data are excluded from national aggregates.

National trend overview

Cities analysed
152
with ≥3 years of data
Improving
105
slope < −2 AQI/yr
Worsening
18
slope > +2 AQI/yr
National change 2016→2024
-38.6%
unweighted mean across cities

National AQI trajectory

Regression slope -8.47 AQI/yr

Unweighted mean across all 152 cities per year. Dashed red line is the linear regression fit.

90110130150170190201620172018201920202021202220232024

Biggest movers

Top five cities by linear-regression slope in each direction. Bars show the full year-by-year AQI; colour follows the NAQI scale.

Leaderboard churn · top 10 2016

Where the most polluted cities of 2016 rank in 2024. Green ↑ means the city climbed out of the top tier (lower rank-index now); red ↓ means it got worse relative to peers.

CityRank 2016Rank 2024Change2024 AQI
Delhi
Delhi
11→ 0210
Varanasi
Uttar Pradesh
2133↓ 13156
Faridabad
Haryana
33→ 0181
Lucknow
Uttar Pradesh
436↓ 32127
Agra
Uttar Pradesh
599↓ 9479
Muzaffarpur
Bihar
611↓ 5151
Patna
Bihar
77→ 0172
Kanpur
Uttar Pradesh
861↓ 53109
Jodhpur
Rajasthan
950↓ 41116
Gaya
Bihar
1058↓ 48110

COVID-era lens · did the 2020 cleanup stick?

Median-city AQI across three reference years. Median resists outliers better than mean for this kind of comparison.

2019 baseline
124
pre-pandemic
2020 lockdown
105
-15% vs baseline
2024 latest
102
-3% vs 2020

Verdict: Median city is still cleaner than before the pandemic.

NCAP context

India's National Clean Air Programme (launched 2019) originally targeted a 20–30% reduction in PM2.5 and PM10 by 2024 for 131 non-attainment cities, since updated to a 40% reduction by 2026against a 2017 baseline. The programme's official KPIs are measured in raw PM2.5 and PM10 µg/m³, not AQI.

The numbers on this page are CPCB AQI, which is a transform of the underlying pollutant concentrations and correlates with — but is not identical to — NCAP's PM-based scorecard. Treat our AQI trajectory as a proxy for NCAP progress, not a direct measurement of it. For the official NCAP dashboard, see moef.gov.in and cpcb.nic.in.

Featured cities

Biggest improver
Varanasi
Uttar Pradesh
-75.1% since 2016
Biggest worsener
Shillong
Meghalaya
+120.6% since 2019
Steadiest trajectory
Ooty
Tamil Nadu
Slope 0.00 AQI/yr

About this data

  • Source: CPCB station-level daily AQI readings, 2016–2024 (605,654 records across 551 stations in 214 cities).
  • Methodology: Daily AQI → annual means → ordinary-least-squares regression of AQI vs year. A city is classified as improvingif slope < −2 AQI/yr, worsening if slope > +2 AQI/yr, else stable.
  • Coverage: Only cities with ≥3 years of CPCB observations are included. Cities without continuous monitoring are excluded from all aggregates on this page.
  • National trajectory: unweighted mean across all contributing cities per year; heavily-monitored metros and smaller Tier-2 cities count equally.

Related analytics

Seasonal pollution patterns →Pollution health impact →CPCB monitoring stations →WHO PM2.5 benchmark →City-vs-city AQI comparison →
All 213 cities with trend data(click to expand)

Related AQI searches

India vs WHO PM2.5 5/15Mumbai pollution health impactBangalore seasonal AQIDelhi vs Mumbai AQIKolkata CPCB stations