We have a plan to clean Yamuna, reduce Delhi pollution: Gopal Rai

Delhi's environment minister Gopal Rai discusses air quality improvements and ongoing challenges, emphasizing the AAP's commitment to continue their efforts.

In the run-up to the Delhi assembly elections, Delhi’s environment, forests and general administration department minister Gopal Rai sat down with HT’s Snehil Sinha to discuss various issues. Edited excerpts:

Gopal Rai. (Sanjeev Verma/HT Photo)

Firecrackers are banned in Delhi every year and stubble burning is reducing. But, Delhi’s PM2.5 level increased in the past two years. Are these sources not to blame?

In 2016, there were 109 days in Delhi when the air quality was “good” or “satisfactory”. This increased to 206 such days in 2023, and 209 in 2024. So, the number of days with relatively good air has nearly doubled thanks to our efforts. Whatever pollution Delhi has is the same in the wider 250km zone, but while other cities have two monitoring stations, Delhi has 40. I regretfully say that we wrote five letters to the Union environment minister to conduct a meeting of (key states in) the region, but we did not get a response.

There’s been a marginal improvement in Delhi’s air quality, but Delhi still ranks among the world’s most polluted cities. Do you think the government has done enough?

The first important intervention was providing 24-hour electricity. When we came to power, every market in Delhi was full of smoke and noise from generators; the AAP has gotten rid of these generators. We then worked on improving public transport; Delhi is operating over 2,000 electric buses, which is the largest fleet in any state. Even in private vehicles, around 16% of all new vehicles bought in Delhi are electric because of the subsidies we offer. Thirdly, we shifted all industries operating on fossil fuels to cleaner natural gas. The fourth major task we undertook was to improve the green cover of Delhi; from 20% when the AAP came to power to 23%, despite development work.

The Yamuna is in the limelight with a thick froth at this time of the year. Why are we not seeing a change there?

We have not been able to complete all the work towards cleaning Yamuna because of political disturbances from the Union government. However, we have undertaken two major works. Water and waste from all over Delhi reach Yamuna through the Shahdara and Najafgarh drains, especially from all the unauthorised colonies; we have covered all such unauthorised colonies under a sewer network that did not exist till now. We planned to build multiple sewage treatment plants (STPs); this work is partially done and will be completed soon. Politics aside, we have a plan to clean the Yamuna and we are working on it.

As the general administration department minister, there were many instances of officers not obeying government orders. Will this change after this election?

This is not a “tussle” or “situation”, the power over officers has been systematically grabbed from Delhi’s elected government. How can you run a crippled system where officers who are supposed to execute your policies do not answer to you or cannot be rewarded or punished or employed for a task? Yet, we have made efforts. We have no power but 100% responsibility.

What are the key issues at play in this assembly elections?

People have this fear that if the AAP goes out of power, then in this time of increasing costs, the subsidies we offer will go. We are telling people that we will continue all the work that we have been doing. Second, we will take forward the existing work. So, during the pollution season, we will continue to intensify our efforts. Street-scaping roads will be taken across Delhi. The 24-hour water supply experiment in Rajinder Nagar will be scaled to the entire city. We have to also work on the guarantees we have given to the women and elderly. We will work towards improving the overall quality of life of the people of Delhi.