NEW DELHI, October 23 (Aalimi Nation) – Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday inaugurated and laid foundation stones for 43 projects worth Rs 8,941 crore aimed at cleaning the Yamuna in Delhi, and said he was confident the river would be cleaned before May 2029.
Ten of the projects were inaugurated and work on 33 others was initiated at the event, which was attended by Delhi Lieutenant Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu and Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, officials said.
The works include upgrading existing sewage treatment plants and installing new ones, setting up a decentralised sewage treatment pumping station, connecting households to sewer lines, rehabilitating old sewers and tapping drains so that untreated flow is stopped before it reaches the river. Shah said the schemes would treat several lakh litres of wastewater before it flows into the Yamuna.
Public-space works at Asita East, Bansera and Vasudev Ghat were also among the works named at the event.
Shah described the effort as a joint exercise by the Centre and the governments of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had held a major meeting after the party's government was formed in Delhi and had placed his vision for the Yamuna before the Delhi government and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Shah said that more than 40 per cent of the work under the Yamuna action plan had been completed "in such a short time" since the government took office in Delhi. He said the government was committed to purifying the river by 2029 and expected it to happen before May 2029.
He also said Delhi has a three-year action plan to provide a sewer connection to every household and to ensure that clean drinking water reaches every home. In his remarks he also alleged that dairy operations discharge about 2,000 tonnes of cow dung into the river every day; that figure was his claim and no independent estimate was given at the event.
Shah also spoke about the city's landfill sites. He said the Delhi government, with the Centre's help, had cleared 2.17 crore metric tonnes of garbage and freed 100 acres of land from waste. According to him, the heaps at Okhla and Bhalswa have been reduced by 30 to 40 metres each, and the one at Ghazipur by 10 to 15 metres. He said gardens would come up on the reclaimed land within two years.
Shah used the occasion to attack the previous Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi, saying it made excuses about not getting help and did no work on cleaning the Yamuna. He also accused it of corruption and of playing politics over the garbage mountains. These were his statements; the AAP did not respond in the reports available at the time of writing.
He also attacked the Punjab government over the drug trade and said his party would end it in Punjab by 2029. These allegations are Shah's and were not independently verified.
The progress figure and the timeline are the government's own. Officials did not give project-wise completion dates at the event, and independent water-quality readings from the river will show whether the claimed 40 per cent progress translates into cleaner water.
