A four-pronged strategy is at the heart of a plan, which has been rolled out by Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena, to clean Yamuna in three years. With trash skimmers, weed harvesters, and a dredge utility craft, the cleaning operation started on Sunday, according to the L-G House. This came a day after Saxena met Chief Secretary Dharmendra and the Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC), and asked them to start work immediately, said officials.
Cleaning of Yamuna was one of the top poll promises made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the people of Delhi during the Assembly election campaign. The manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is set to form a government in Delhi after coming to power following a gap of 27 years, also counts the cleaning of the river among its top priorities.
“The trash skimmers have already started the work at Vasudev Ghat. Meanwhile, weed harvesters have started working at ITO barrage and another location near the Signature Bridge,” said officials.
Under the four-pronged strategy, the authority concerned first starts with the trash, garbage, and silt in the river stream. Simultaneously, cleaning operations in the Najafgarh drain, supplementary drain, and all other major drains begin.
“At the same time, a daily watch on the existing STPs (sewage treatment plants) in terms of their capacity and output will be maintained, and a time-bound plan in terms of construction of new STPs/DSTPs (decentralised (sewage treatment plants) to meet the actual shortfall of treating about 400 MGD (million gallons a day) of sewer will be put in place and operationalised,” said the L-G House.
The L-G House said that execution of this plan, which targets cleaning the river in about three years, will require seamless coordination between various agencies and departments that include the Delhi Jal Board, I&FC, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), Environment Department, PWD, and the Delhi Development Authority.
To complete the work on time, the work will be monitored at the highest level every week, said officials. In addition to this, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) has been directed to keep a strict vigil on the discharge of untreated effluent into the drains by Industrial Units in the Capital.
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Blaming the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the delay in cleaning the river, the Raj Niwas said, “It may be noted that the rejuvenation of Yamuna had started in a mission mode in January 2023, when the NGT had constituted a High-Level Committee (HLC) under the Chairmanship of the L-G. However, after five meetings of the said HLC which was closely monitoring cleaning operations, the then AAP government under Arvind Kejriwal moved the Supreme Court and got the NGT order stayed by the then CJI Chandrachud on 10.07.23.”
“Thereafter, the Yamuna rejuvenation work had again been stalled,” the L-G office alleged, adding that the pollution in the river reached “record levels early this year”.