Delhi elections over, new government has a mountain to climb on environment

The BJP is hardly unaware that after their historic triumph in Delhi, they have a mountain to climb to tackle the environmental black hole that Delhi has become.

When a new BJP government takes office, improving the capital city’s air quality, cleaning the Yamuna River, and tackling the problem of mountainous waste landfills will be top-of-the-mind obstacles.

“Our new government will certainly act. We are aware of the magnitude of the problem and Prime Minister Modi has himself given the clarion call for change. We are committed (sic),” says Satish Upadhya, Vice Chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and a former president of the Delhi BJP.

Upadhya says the BJP poll manifesto for the first 100 days is clear on what needs to be done.

The big challenge for the new government is that many things have already been attempted. Earlier governments have closed coal power plants, stopped dirty fuels, scaled up industrial use of natural gas, put entire public transport and commercial fleets on natural gas, banned old vehicles, restricted truck entry, tightened control on construction, etc. Yet clean air continues to elude.

In a study entitled Capital Gains, Clean Air Action in Delhi-NCR: What Next, the Centre for Science and Environment noted that the last few years have witnessed the generation of more robust scientific information on air pollution, the maturing of several actions initiated over the past decades, and the opening of new policy opportunities to enable the attention this public health crisis deserves.

Smells like bad air

Yet, the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same. In 2024, Delhi’s air quality was poor or worse fora total of 155 days. In November last year, some parts of the NCR turned into gas chambers with theair quality index (AQI)crossing 700.

‘Indians, take action’: Bryan Johnson sparks debate after abrupt exit from Nikhil Kamath’s podcast over poor AQI

An article published in The Lancet Planetary Health in July 2024claimed that about 7.2 per cent of all deaths in India were attributable to particulate matter (PM) 2.5 concentrations higher than 15 microgrammes per cubic metre of air recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Delhi tops this list of Indian cities.

The BJP’s 2025 election manifesto promised to launch ‘Delhi Clean Air Mission’ to halve the city’s average AQI by 2030. It also assured reduction of PM2.5 and PM10 levels by 50 per cent, in addition to deploying additional road sweeping and water sprinkling machines in highly polluted areas.

The poll manifesto also wants to develop the Yamuna riverfront on the lines of the Sabarmati riverfront in Gujarat. To that end, it wants to put into place a Yamuna Kosh (fund) to revitalise the river. Under this, wastewater from the capital’s three major drains will be fully treated before they flow into the river. To do that, the sewage treatment plant capacity will be expanded to 1,000 million gallons per day and the common effluent treatment plant capacity to 220 million litres per day, ensuring zero industrial emissions into the Yamuna.

It would be instructive to remember that during the election campaign, former Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal was under fire for failing to deliver on this promise.

What a waste!

The third serious ecological hazard is waste management. On average, the capital generates over 11,000 tonnes of solid waste per day, but its waste processing plants have a capacity intake of a little over 8,000 tonnes, according to the Delhi Municipal Corporation. The non-processed wastes end up at landfill sites in Ghazipur, Okhla, and Bhalswa.Despite attempts to remove at least 28 million tonnes of waste dumped at these landfills, the city continues to dump fresh waste, affecting the progress of attempts to flatten the dump sites.

The BJP has promised to increase treatment capacity to eliminate the garbage mountains at Ghazipur, Okhla and Bhalswa and to enhance waste collection capacity in the city.

The promises look assuring on paper, but no policy can succeed if people do not participate. Civic behaviour, such as throwing garbage anywhere and unplanned and unregulated construction works, is something the new government will have to reckon with, as the one preceding it did.

Hopefully, a ‘double engine’ government should make governance easier and raise substantial funds to build efficient infrastructure.

Funds would be needed. According to one calculation, Delhi’s subsidy bill under the AAP government has shot up more than 600% over the past 10 years! Of course, Kejriwal always argued that subsidies are mandatory, given the difficult situation that common people find themselves in, but it makes it difficult for the next government to deliver on its lofty promises.

The BJP is hardly unaware that after their historic triumph in Delhi, they have a mountain to climb to tackle the environmental black hole that Delhi has become.

When a new BJP government takes office, improving the capital city’s air quality, cleaning the Yamuna River, and tackling the problem of mountainous waste landfills will be top-of-the-mind obstacles.

“Our new government will certainly act. We are aware of the magnitude of the problem and Prime Minister Modi has himself given the clarion call for change. We are committed (sic),” says Satish Upadhya, Vice Chairman of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and a former president of the Delhi BJP.

Upadhya says the BJP poll manifesto for the first 100 days is clear on what needs to be done.

The big challenge for the new government is that many things have already been attempted. Earlier governments have closed coal power plants, stopped dirty fuels, scaled up industrial use of natural gas, put entire public transport and commercial fleets on natural gas, banned old vehicles, restricted truck entry, tightened control on construction, etc. Yet clean air continues to elude.

In a study entitled Capital Gains, Clean Air Action in Delhi-NCR: What Next, the Centre for Science and Environment noted that the last few years have witnessed the generation of more robust scientific information on air pollution, the maturing of several actions initiated over the past decades, and the opening of new policy opportunities to enable the attention this public health crisis deserves.

Smells like bad air

Yet, the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same. In 2024, Delhi’s air quality was poor or worse fora total of 155 days. In November last year, some parts of the NCR turned into gas chambers with theair quality index (AQI)crossing 700.

‘Indians, take action’: Bryan Johnson sparks debate after abrupt exit from Nikhil Kamath’s podcast over poor AQI

An article published in The Lancet Planetary Health in July 2024claimed that about 7.2 per cent of all deaths in India were attributable to particulate matter (PM) 2.5 concentrations higher than 15 microgrammes per cubic metre of air recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Delhi tops this list of Indian cities.

The BJP’s 2025 election manifesto promised to launch ‘Delhi Clean Air Mission’ to halve the city’s average AQI by 2030. It also assured reduction of PM2.5 and PM10 levels by 50 per cent, in addition to deploying additional road sweeping and water sprinkling machines in highly polluted areas.

The poll manifesto also wants to develop the Yamuna riverfront on the lines of the Sabarmati riverfront in Gujarat. To that end, it wants to put into place a Yamuna Kosh (fund) to revitalise the river. Under this, wastewater from the capital’s three major drains will be fully treated before they flow into the river. To do that, the sewage treatment plant capacity will be expanded to 1,000 million gallons per day and the common effluent treatment plant capacity to 220 million litres per day, ensuring zero industrial emissions into the Yamuna.

It would be instructive to remember that during the election campaign, former Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal was under fire for failing to deliver on this promise.

What a waste!

The third serious ecological hazard is waste management. On average, the capital generates over 11,000 tonnes of solid waste per day, but its waste processing plants have a capacity intake of a little over 8,000 tonnes, according to the Delhi Municipal Corporation. The non-processed wastes end up at landfill sites in Ghazipur, Okhla, and Bhalswa.Despite attempts to remove at least 28 million tonnes of waste dumped at these landfills, the city continues to dump fresh waste, affecting the progress of attempts to flatten the dump sites.

The BJP has promised to increase treatment capacity to eliminate the garbage mountains at Ghazipur, Okhla and Bhalswa and to enhance waste collection capacity in the city.

The promises look assuring on paper, but no policy can succeed if people do not participate. Civic behaviour, such as throwing garbage anywhere and unplanned and unregulated construction works, is something the new government will have to reckon with, as the one preceding it did.

Hopefully, a ‘double engine’ government should make governance easier and raise substantial funds to build efficient infrastructure.

Funds would be needed. According to one calculation, Delhi’s subsidy bill under the AAP government has shot up more than 600% over the past 10 years! Of course, Kejriwal always argued that subsidies are mandatory, given the difficult situation that common people find themselves in, but it makes it difficult for the next government to deliver on its lofty promises.