‘No magic wand, doing everything’: Delhi CM Rekha Gupta on pollution, says will take time to tackle ‘legacy problems’
“We cannot do something like a lockdown in a city like Delhi,” CM Rekha Gupta said, calling smog a “legacy problem” at Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2025
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta termed the persistent smog and air pollution in the national capital "a legacy problem”, and said on Saturday that there can be no “jaadu ki chhadi” (magic wand) to control it. “It is an ongoing process,” she stressed, adding that a timeline cannot be given for such problems.
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“We cannot do something like a lockdown in a city like Delhi,” she said, speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2025 in New Delhi.
She underlined the rising population of Delhi, around 3 crore now, and listed the rising number of private vehicles among factors for the pollution.
“We have to keep the city running, and handle the pollution at the same time,” she said, adding, “We are doing everything. We move a step forward each day."
She also questioned the previous AAP and Congress government over the past many decades. “What did they do?” she asked, in conversation with NDTV Managing Editor Padmaja Joshi.
“I can say this with confidence that, in the 10 months of our government so far, we have done at high speed what the previous governments should have done,” the CM said, speaking in Hindi.
Asked if she could say a 50% drop in AQI would be achieved by her government by a certain time, she said, “We are consistently making efforts, and seeing improvement every day. Yes, one thing is for sure, people of Delhi will know Rekha Gupta gave her 100%.”
She went on to list what the BJP government has done: from giving heaters to people to stop open burning of wood, to using sprinklers to provide relief, and strict implementation of norms.
She rubbished reports that her government has been sprinkling water around the Air Quality Index (AQI) monitoring stations to keep the numbers down. She also denied that her government formed a “fake pond” next to a polluted Yamuna river at the time of Chhath Puja.
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On tackling the pollution in the river, she said, “Yamuna's clean-up is a big project. All major drains empty in the river. After we came to power, these things were addressed."
“It is not a one-day job,” she stressed again, promising that the cleaning of the Yamuna is “continuing on a war footing”.
