AAP, BJP row over Delhi’s sewage treatment plants

The Delhi government dismissed the claims, saying that the report was of June and much had changed on ground in the past four months

New Delhi

The foam on the Yamuna is a sign of pollution. (Sunil Ghosh/HT Photo)

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Delhi government of misleading the public with “false claims” of cleaning the Yamuna, citing an RTI reply that revealed all 37 sewage treatment plants (STPs) in the city were failing to meet prescribed treatment standards. The Delhi government dismissed the claims, saying that the report was of June and much had changed on ground in the past four months.

Addressing a press conference, AAP Delhi president Saurabh Bharadwaj said that the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) inspection found faecal coliform levels hundreds of times higher than permissible limits in the treated water.

“When all STPs are failing, how can the BJP government claim to have cleaned the Yamuna?” he asked, terming the entire campaign a publicity stunt.

Bharadwaj alleged that untreated sewage continued to flow into the river and that the Central government no longer trusted the Delhi Jal Board’s (DJB) data due to alleged manipulation of internal reports. “It was the Centre that ordered the CPCB to independently test all STPs because DJB’s data was unreliable,” he said.

The AAP leader said the inspection covered major plants, including those at Okhla, Coronation Pillar, Kondli, Rithala, Keshopur, Yamuna Vihar, and Nilothi, among others, all of which failed to meet the “10 by 10” discharge norms. “Every single one of these STPs failed the test. This is not a small administrative lapse– it’s an environmental disaster,” he said.

Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor alleged that if there was any shortcoming at the 37 STPs, the responsibility lay with Arvind Kejriwal’s 10-year government, not with the eight-month-old BJP government.

“If Saurabh Bharadwaj has the political courage, he should respond to the recent Centre for Science and Environment report, which alleged that despite spending ₹6,856 crore between 2015 and 2022 in the name of cleaning the Yamuna, the Kejriwal government failed to clean the river and 37 STPs were reported as failures,” Kapoor said.