Rai asks BJP to stop blame game and help in curbing pollution

New Delhi: Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai on Wednesday slammed the BJP for undermining the efforts of the Delhi government to control pollution in the Capital. Rai said that instead of finding faults with the Delhi government for distributing the Pusa bio-decomposer free of cost to farmers to find a solution to the problem of stubble burning in Delhi, the BJP should contribute towards curbing pollution in the city.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, a day after the Delhi BJP accused the Delhi government of not providing the bio-decomposer developed by the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) to farmers in Delhi, Rai said that his government was taking measures to fight pollution but the BJP leaders, on the other hand, were misleading people.

“No BJP leader is seen participating in any campaign, they are just seen playing blame game and doing politics. The bio-decomposer solution was sprayed on 2,000 acres of land across Delhi after the farmers filled the forms. The government has the record of the forms filled for spraying the solution on the fields, as evidence against the charges of the BJP leaders,” Rai said.

He added that based on the effectiveness of the bio-decomposer, the Delhi government had filed a petition in front of the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) on Tuesday.

“Under the leadership of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, the people of Delhi have waged a war against pollution. We introduced ‘red light on gaadi off’ campaign to curb vehicle pollution, anti-dust campaign to combat dust pollution, we have deployed teams and are taking action on biomass burning across Delhi. We have introduced the bio decomposer technique in association with IARI, Pusa, to combat pollution due to stubble burning in Delhi,” said Rai.

Hitting back at Rai, Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta said, “By spending crores of rupees, CM Kejriwal is campaigning on TV to make fertilizers from the paddy stubble, but the farmers said that neither any fertilizer is being made in any area nor has any farmer been contacted in this regard by the Kejriwal government.”