Mission Clean Yamuna: Can Delhi CM Rekha Gupta fulfil her party's promise?

Delhi government plans to clean the Yamuna to bathing standards by February 2025

Within a week of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning the Delhi Assembly election and even before government formation, Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena announced a four-pronged strategy to clean the Yamuna river, which includes removing accumulated waste, cleaning major drains, monitoring existing sewage treatment plants (STPs), and constructing new ones.

The announcement, backed by videos and pictures, suggested the intent of the BJP government in Delhi.

So far, every major political party has promised to clean the Yamuna in their Delhi election manifestoes, but the BJP infused some hope this time by giving a deadline of three years.

The promise seemed to have worked as the BJP won nine of the 15 assembly constituencies on the Yamuna belt in the 2025 elections. In 2020, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had dominated these constituencies, winning 13 out of 15 seats.

The BJP scripted a historic victory in the 2025 polls by winning 48 seats in the 70-member Delhi assembly. The AAP, in power since 2015, won just 22 seats.

On February 20, hours after taking oath as Delhi chief minister, Rekha Gupta and her cabinet colleagues performed an aarti at the Yamuna, sending a clear signal that cleaning the toxic river will be a top priority for the BJP, which has come to power in the national capital after 27 years.

Also Read: Why didn't Delhi LG order Yamuna clean-up earlier? TMC joins debate on river cleaning.

A Yamuna riverfront, an annual festival and 10,000 MGD sewage treatment plant capacity

The BJP government in Delhi plans to develop a Yamuna riverfront, on the lines of the Sabarmati riverfront, ensuring 24x7 commercial establishments, interactive shows, theatres and other entertainment facilities along the riverbank. It also wants to hold an annual festival once the riverfront is ready.

To be sure, the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, was built at an investment of Rs 2,000 crore, whereas governments in Delhi have spent at least Rs 8,000 crore so far in attempts to clean the Yamuna from 2015 till now. The first phase of the Sabarmati riverfront was completed around 2020 and the second phase is currently underway and is expected to be over by 2027.

As promised by the Hon'ble Prime Minister @narendramodi in the run up to the just concluded Assembly Elections, works on cleaning of Yamuna have already begun in the right earnest, with trash skimmers, weed harvesters & a dredge utility craft already starting cleaning operations pic.twitter.com/KtDy7riIPn
Raj Niwas Delhi (@RajNiwasDelhi) February 16, 2025

The BJP's plan in Delhi also includes setting up a Yamuna Kosh to revitalise the river, which will include measures such as full treatment of wastewater from drains like Barapullah, Shahdara and Ghazipur, before it flows into the Yamuna and ensuring “zero industrial emissions” into the Yamuna.

The party’s poll manifesto talks about treating water from all drains flowing into the Sahibi River, which, currently, has become a sewer and is commonly known as the Najafgarh drain.

A significant aspect of the BJP’s plan to clean up the Yamuna is to expand Delhi’s existing sewage treatment plant capacity to 1,000 million gallons per day (MGD) from the current 667 MGD. It also plans to increase the city’s common effluent treatment plant capacity to 220 MLD from about 200 MLD.

But experts say the mission to clean the Yamuna will need more than just high-end machinery. The Yamuna collects 79 percent of its total pollution only from Delhi, making it the one of the most polluted rivers of India.

Also Read: Delhi Elections 2025: Popular power subsidy outlay increased 150 percent in 10 years.

Why Delhi needs to fix its sewage

According to the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), much of the problem of cleaning up the Yamuna would be solved if the government can tackle the city’s sewage, the volume of which is only set to grow over the years.

CEEW estimates done for Moneycontrol (using CPCB 2021 data and population projections) suggest that the total sewage generation in Delhi is expected to increase by 75 percent from 1,099 million cubic metres (MCM) in 2021 to about 1,920 MCM in 2050. In 2024, it was already 1,300 MCM and the installed treatment capacity was about 80 percent.

Also Read: Delhi pollution control panel presents action plan to PMO for Yamuna rejuvenation.

“Hence, Delhi needs to strengthen its sewage treatment infrastructure and ensure that the existing treatment plants operate as per the discharge standards to reduce pollution in the river Yamuna. Further, it should adopt a policy to promote and incentivise the reuse of treated wastewater, which can reduce water withdrawal from the local aquifers and river Yamuna,” Nitin Bassi, Senior Programme Lead, CEEW, told Moneycontrol.

At least 22 drains carrying a mix of treated and untreated sewage and industrial wastewater empty into the Yamuna in Delhi. Besides, behavioural campaigns to sensitise community on safe disposal of solid waste will also be needed.

The long- forgotten Yamuna sewer interceptor project

Delhi has been implementing the Yamuna sewer interceptor project since 2011 to divert all its sewage for treatment before it is released to the freshwater bodies. However, gains in terms of improvement in Yamuna water quality are still not realised.

The Yamuna sewer interceptor project, designed to capture sewage before it reaches the Yamuna river and treat it at sewage treatment plants, has been plagued by delays and remains largely incomplete despite being planned decades ago. This is primarily due to issues such as lack of coordination between agencies, land acquisition difficulties, and slow project execution. Although some progress has been made, many smaller drains are yet to be addressed, leaving the river significantly polluted.

The broader effort to clean the Yamuna has been going on since 1993 with the Yamuna Action Plan, which gave birth to the sewer interceptor project as well. But the actual work started only around 2011.

Financing needs vast

As per CEEW estimates, the net present cost of setting up 1 million litres per day of tertiary sewage treatment capacity will be about Rs 6 crore.

A Moneycontrol analysis showed that Delhi's sanitation expenditure lags behind cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai. Despite having a smaller budget than Delhi, Mumbai is expected to outspend the National Capital Region's allocation to water supply and sewage by nearly two times. The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board had provisioned Rs 1,521 crore in FY24, or 19 percent of city’s total budget of Rs 7,868 crore.

But the BJP says the Centre would provide additional funds, if needed . “Now that the BJP has won, we will secure the necessary funds to fulfil our promises, plug leakages, and eradicate corruption,” said Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva.

The party’s manifesto also mentioned that the Delhi government would “collaborate” with the Centre in developing the proposed Yamuna riverfront, if it came to power.