Govt digs in, Oppn cries ‘rain theft’ as cloud-seeding trial is suspended

A day after two cloud-seeding operations over Delhi fell short of delivering rain, another round of seeding, planned for Wednesday, had to be called off due to “insufficient moisture” in the clouds, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur said on Wednesday.

- Aheli Das

The trial, meant to test whether artificial rain could help cleanse Delhi's notoriously toxic air, also became the subject of political sparring and scientific scepticism.

While the Delhi government hailed it as a “science-led intervention” that showed encouraging results despite the dry weather, opposition parties dismissed the exercise as a “waste of taxpayer money.” Scientists, meanwhile, cautioned that cloud seeding is not a viable or lasting solution to Delhi’s pollution crisis, especially during the city’s dry and stagnant winter months.

The latest developments come aday after a small, single-propeller aircraft operated by IIT-Kanpur had flown over Delhi and parts of NCR, firing silver iodide flares in two phases of cloud seeding trials. However, the trials failed to produce any rain.

“The process is highly dependent on the right atmospheric conditions. While rainfall could not be triggered because moisture levels were only 15-20%, the trial delivered valuable insights,” the institute said in a statement on Wednesday.