Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva on Thursday bathed in the highly polluted waters of the Yamuna river and accused former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of failing to fulfill his promise to clean the Yamuna river by 2025. Delhi BJP said in a statement that after taking the bath, Sachdeva experienced skin rashes and some difficulty breathing. Doctors at RML Hospital examined him and gave him medicine for three days.
Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party leader and Environment Minister Gopal Rai responded and said the BJP drama is becoming as intense as the rising pollution levels. He claimed, “The BJP governments of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are responsible for pollution in Yamuna by releasing untreated industrial sewage into Yamuna.”
On the eve of Purvanchali’s Chhath festival, celebrated a few days after Diwali, the ruling AAP and the BJP are accusing each other of heavy pollution and toxic foam in the river. The BJP had set up a stage at Chhath Ghat with two chairs for Delhi Chief Minister Atishi and her predecessor Arvind Kejriwal and also rolled out a red carpet to welcome them.
On Wednesday, Sachdeva had challenged Kejriwal to take a dip in the river, saying that he had promised the people of Delhi that he would clean it before Chhath Puja 2025 so that they could bathe in it. The Delhi BJP president bathed in the dirty waters of Yamuna a few days before Chhath and that too after apologizing.
In fact, before the Delhi Assembly elections in 2020, the then Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had only promised that Yamuna would be pollution-free by 2025 and had said that Yamuna water would be clean enough to take a dip For this, Yamuna can be made pollution-free. Regarding this, the Delhi BJP issued a statement in which Virendra Sachdwa apologized to Mother Yamuna because Arvind Kejriwal and the Atishi Marlena government of Delhi looted Rs 8,500 crore from the Yamuna Cleansing Fund but did not clean up the Yamuna.
We reported that the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had appointed a high-level committee under the chairmanship of Saxena in January 2023 to clean the Yamuna, the Supreme Court had stayed the order on the request of the AAP government. The Delhi government argued that the committee headed by the lieutenant governor sidelined the elected and responsible government. The AAP government on Monday alleged that industrial waste from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh is reaching Yamuna. To remove foam from the river and reduce pollution, the Delhi government sprayed a silicone-based food-grade antifoam concentrate.
