Cleaning up Yamuna will be priority in next tenure: Kejriwal

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Friday that cleaning up river Yamuna will be his government's priority in the next five years if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is voted back to power in the upcoming Assembly elections.

Addressing a Town Hall meeting at the Maharaja Agrasen College in East Delhi, Kejriwal said that his dream is to make Delhi the cleanest city in the world. He also said that issues of air pollution and garbage in Delhi will be addressed as some of the most significant issues in the next five years.

"We have worked with complete honesty to improve the lives of the people of Delhi in the last five years. We have worked in the fields of education and health, constructed roads, installed sewer pipelines, CCTV cameras, subsidised water and electricity, things that were not done in the last 70 years. A lot still needs to be done. We have to clean the Yamuna and the entire city. We have to revamp the transport sector and work on eradicating pollution from Delhi," the Chief Minister said.

Kejriwal said that Yamuna is being polluted by sewer and industrial waste from the city.

"Cleaning up Yamuna is our priority in the next five years. We have identified and planned a waste management system. I assure you that in the next five years, we will clean up Yamuna. I will be the first one to take a dip in the river," Kejriwal said.

He said the Delhi government, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the Delhi Lt. Governor are planning several steps to eradicate garbage dumps from the national capital.

"I hope that we will be able to resolve this issue in the next few years, along with cleaning roads, sewers and river Yamuna. It is my dream to make Delhi the cleanest city in the world," he said.

On asked about the steps being taken to tackle the problem of air pollution in the city, Kejriwal said that in the next five years, he will work on resolving the traffic congestion problem and pollution in Delhi.

"Delhi has internal sources of pollution like industry and vehicular emissions, and temperature inversion is common in winters which causes an increase in air pollution. We have been able to decrease pollution by 25 per cent from February to October last year.

"But a lot needs to be done. We have introduced the EV Policy and will carry out mechanical sweeping to tackle pollution. We will also implement the emergency measures early this year so that the problem can be resolved at the earliest," the Chief Minister said.

Kejriwal's tenure as Chief Minister will end next month.