Delhi / Took 70 yrs for Yamuna to become this dirty, can't be cleaned in 2 days: Kejriwal

New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said his government has prepared a six-point plan to clean the Yamuna river to bathing standards by February 2025. New sewer treatment plants are being built and the capacity of existing plants is being increased, the chief minister said.

“This will increase our sewage treatment capacity from around 600 million gallons of waste water a day to 750 MGD-800 MGD,” Kejriwal said.

He said the waste water from four major drains falling in the Yamuna — Najafgarh, Badshahpur, Supplementary and Ghazipur — is being treated. In addition, sewer connections will be constructed in areas that don’t have them already.

The government will shut down the industries discharging industrial waste into the Yamuna, Kejriwal said.

Waste water in “jhuggi jhopri” clusters flows through storm water drains into the Yamuna. These will be connected to the sewer network, the chief minister said.

The government will provide household connections in areas that have a sewer network. Earlier, the consumers had to get the connection themselves. The city government has also started de-silting and rehabilitation of the sewer network.

He vowed that his government will clean up the Yamuna by the time the next polls come around. “It took 70 yrs for river Yamuna to become this dirty, it can’t be cleaned within 2 days. I had promised people in these Delhi polls that it would be cleaned by next polls. We’ve started work on war-footing. We have 6 action points over it, I’m personally monitoring it,” he said, according to ANI.

“Our engineers and officers are hopeful that we will be able to clean the Yamuna by February 2025 with the implementation of the six-point action plan.

“Specific targets have been set for each action point and I will personally monitor the progress,” Kejriwal said.