NEW DELHI: As a grey blanket of smog smothered the city and Delhiites struggled to breathe, air pollution data went missing for a major portion of Monday. Since 1 pm, neither hourly air quality index (AQI) updates nor the city's daily average had been released till late evening, even as the air visibly worsened since the afternoon. While hourly AQI data for individual stations was back on the Central Pollution Control Board website around 9pm, there were gaps in readings at several monitors. There was no response from CPCB or the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) to TOI's queries on the data outage. As per an independent analysis, the average PM2.5 concentration from 12am to 9pm on Monday was 249 micrograms per cubic metre as compared to 215 micrograms per cubic metre over t

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