Ahead of the assembly election in Delhi, the pollution of the Yamuna River has become an election issue, with opposition parties targeting the ruling Aam Aadmi Party for failure to fulfil its promise of cleaning the river. Amid this, former CM Arvind Kejriwal has made a shocking claim, as he has denied spending around ₹7000 crore to clean the river.
The AAP supremo made the claim in an interview with journalist Subhankar Mishra. During the interview, Mishra cited a 2023 report by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee saying that nearly ₹6,856.91 crore was spent in five years, from 2017 to 2021, to clean the Delhi stretch of Yamuna, and asked why there was no visible sign of the work done after spending such a huge amount.
To this, Arvind Kejriwal shot back at the journalist, accusing of alleging that AAP has pocketed ₹7000 crore of govt money meant for cleaning river water. When Subhankar Mishra tried to explain that he was not alleging corruption, and only wanted to know why the river remained dirty after spending the amount, Kejriwal counter-questioned him asking where the money had been spent.
When Mishra said that it was reported by major media houses, the former Delhi CM said the reports are wrong. He said that the journalist should use his brain to know that the report is wrong. Kejriwal kept trying to play the victim by pretending that the journalist was accusing the party of misappropriating the money, adding that if the party had so much money, CM Atishi would be doing crowd funding her election campaign.
Notably, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee is an autonomous regulatory body in the Delhi government, and its budget is part of the budget of the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
Arvind Kejriwal refused to directly address the issue of why the Yamuna has not been cleaned yet, only listing the causes of why the river is dirty. He didn’t forget to target other states for the issue, blaming people from other states of settling near the river.
Delhi Pollution Control Committee report of spending around ₹7,000 crore to clean Yamuna River is wrong, claims Arvind Kejriwal, says he does not know how much was spent pic.twitter.com/TUbaZQAdeZ
— OpIndia.com (@OpIndia_com) January 22, 2025
The former CM did say that his govt has built sewer pipeline networks in the colonies on both sides of the river but refused to divulge how much was spent on it. He said that the govt is in the process of building new sewer treatment plants and upgrading the existing ones, and assured that the river will be cleaned by the next term.
The AAP leader also declined that he had promised in 2015 to clean River Yamuna within 5 years so that people could go for picnics at the river, claiming that he said this only in 2020. But when Mishra said he said it in 2015 and there are videos of the same, Kejriwal said it does not matter whether he said it in 2015 or 2020, as he has now promised to complete the job in his next term of the AAP govt.
Arvind Kejriwal has been promising a clean Yamuna River for 10 years, with no result, and now he has claimed the Delhi Pollution Control Committee report of spending around ₹7000 crore is also wrong. In 2015, the AAP supremo had promised to clean and revive the water body within a span of 5 years i.e. by the year 2020. “We will revive Yamuna within five years,” he had claimed then.
In November 2019, he said his government has planned to clean the Yamuna in the next four to five years, claiming that people would be able to take a dip in it. In December same year, he promised that by the next elections in 2025, he would take the whole village for a dip in the Yamuna.
In January 2020, just before the assembly elections, Arvind Kejriwal claimed, “The Yamuna will be cleaned and made pollution-free. We promise that after five years, anyone will be able to take a dip in the Yamuna without fear of diseases due to dirty water.”
That five years have also passed, and Kejriwal has made another promise to clean the river by the next term. In the meanwhile, data obtained from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) suggests that the pollution in the Yamuna River has doubled between 2015 and 2023.