The Aam Aadmi Party and the ruling BJP in Delhi sparred over the pollution in the Yamuna on Sunday, with the opposition party’s Saurabh Bharadwaj alleging the river has returned to its polluted state after the Chhath festival.
The BJP was quick to hit back, saying the opposition has scored a self-goal by “admitting” the Yamuna has “returned” to the same condition the AAP Government had left it. Days after Chhath Puja ended, AAP’s Delhi unit chief Bharadwaj visited the Vasudev Ghat on Sunday and alleged that workers were dismantling the pipeline that had secretly supplied filtered water to the “fake river the BJP had created” for the festival.
In a video, he was seen holding the Yamuna’s black water in his palms. “After being caught red-handed, the BJP Government is now erasing every trace of the fake Yamuna it created,” he said. Explaining the technical aspect, the AAP Delhi Unit Chief stated, “The ‘rising main’ refers to the principal pipeline that carries water from a treatment plant, which does not go directly to any household or individual. This water is meant only for underground reservoirs (UGRs), from where it is further distributed. Any puncturing or tapping of the rising main is completely illegal and a criminal act. An FIR must be registered in this matter.”
Bharadwaj had earlier alleged that a section of the river was filled with clean water at the Vasudev Ghat for Chhath Puja.
“At the Vasudev Ghat, the BJP is secretly removing the pipeline that carried filtered water to their artificial Yamuna. The real Yamuna, once filled with sewage and flowing right beside the fake one, has now returned to its polluted state,” Bharadwaj said at a press conference.
Hitting back, the Delhi BJP’s spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said every citizen of Delhi acknowledges that in the past eight months, the Rekha Gupta Government did a commendable job to clean the Yamuna, and partial success is already visible. ” Bharadwaj said the Yamuna has returned to its old polluted state; that’s the same condition in which the Arvind Kejriwal Government had left the river,” Kapoor said. “The AAP leaders are politically so frustrated that they cannot accept that the Yamuna’s water and the ghats are now 25 to 30 per cent cleaner compared to the final months of their rule,” he added.
