AAP says BJP faking clean Yamuna, gets a jab in return

BOTH the BJP and Aam Admi Party (AAP) traded barbs on Thursday over the Yamuna’s cleanliness ahead of the Chhath festival.

- EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @New Delhi

BJP hailed the river’s revival under Rekha Gupta government, while AAP accused the ruling dispensation of staging a “fake cleanup” by diverting canal water from Uttar Pradesh into the river.

Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva claimed that the previous AAP government had turned the Yamuna into a “dirty drain” and that it was only under the current administration that the river’s condition had “visibly improved.”

He recalled that when he took a dip in the Yamuna at the ITO ghat last year to expose its pollution, he had to be hospitalised. “Now, under the Rekha Gupta government, the Yamuna has been cleaned so much in just eight months that our spokesperson Dr Anil Gupta performed aachman (ritual sipping) of its water before journalists,” Sachdeva said.