Haven't completed cleaning Yamuna because of political disturbances

In the run-up to the Delhi assembly elections, Delhi's environment, forests and general administration department minister Gopal Rai sat down with HT's Snehil Sinha to discuss various issues.

- Snehil Sinha

Edited excerpts:

Firecrackers are banned in Delhi every year and stubble burning is reducing. But, Delhi's PM2.5 level increased in the past two years.

Are these sources not to blame?

In 2016, there were 109 days in Delhi when the air quality was "good" or "satisfactory". This increased to 206 such days in 2023, and 209 in 2024. So, the number of days with relatively good air has nearly doubled thanks to our efforts. Whatever pollution Delhi has is the same in the wider 250km zone, but while other cities have two monitoring stations, Delhi has 40. I regretfully say that we wrote five letters to the Union environment minister to conduct a meeting of (key states in) the region, but we did not get a response.