NEW DELHI: As the four-day Chhath Puja festival began on Saturday with the Nahay Khay ritual, political tensions in the capital flared following a Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) report showing a decline in the Yamuna’s water quality.
The report stated that the river’s water remains unfit for bathing across Delhi, except at Palla, where it enters the city. Samples taken on October 9 revealed high pollution levels, with major drains, such as Molarband and Sahibabad, recording Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) levels of 145 mg/l and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) at 416 mg/l—five times the permissible limit.
AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj accused the BJP government of misleading people ahead of Chhath Puja, challenging Chief Minister Rekha Gupta to “drink Yamuna water” if she claimed it was clean. He said, “Thousands of Purvanchal devotees would face the consequences of the government’s false claims.” Several AAP leaders later reached the CM’s residence with bottles of Yamuna water to reiterate the challenge.
Delhi Water Minister Parvesh Verma countered that the BJP-led administration has worked “with full honesty” to clean the river, citing a significant drop in fecal coliform levels at Asgarpur from 80 lakh to 8,000. He added that DPCC reports are now publicly available.
“Earlier, these reports were not even uploaded publicly. Today, every test result is available online for citizens to see - that’s the difference between opacity and accountability. Women visiting the ghats are saying they’ve never seen the Yamuna this clean. This is the result of hard work,” Verma said.