Delhi unit president of the Aam Aadmi Party, Saurabh Bharadwaj, has alleged that the Delhi government has constructed and filled the Vasudev Ghat with filtered water instead of water from the Yamuna river, ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s expected visit during the upcoming Chhath Puja celebration.
Addressing a press conference here today, Bharadwaj said that while Chhath devotees are left to stand in the real, polluted river, the Bharatiya Janata Party is playing with the lives of lakhs of Purvanchalis in the national capital.
Claiming that the Yamuna remains dangerously toxic, the AAP leader said that Delhi’s Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) has admitted that the water can cause serious diseases, yet BJP leaders are busy staging photo-ops and spraying chemicals to mask the foam.
“The BJP’s Delhi government has assigned staff the duty of spraying that chemical in the Yamuna from 9:00 a.m. to remove the foam. To expose the BJP’s lie, we went at 7:00 am, recorded a video of the foam in the Yamuna and released it to the public, and the BJP’s lie was exposed,” he said adding that post that workers were made to spray the chemical and remove the foam at 5.00 am.
Speaking about the Vasudev Ghat built near Delhi ISBT (Inter State Bus Terminal), Bharadwaj accused BJP of constructed an artificial river along the Yamuna bank.
“A small stream secretly filled with filtered water taken from the Wazirabad Water Treatment Plant’s pipeline that supplies Delhi’s drinking water. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take a dip in that filtered-water Yamuna to fool the people of Delhi, Bihar and Purvanchal, and to show that the BJP has cleaned the Yamuna,” he said.
“Have you ever heard of the Prime Minister catching the flu when seasons change? During the COVID-19 period, did you ever hear that the Prime Minister contracted COVID? News often reaches us that people fall ill in Delhi from drinking dirty water—typhoid, for example—so have you ever heard that the Prime Minister got typhoid from drinking contaminated water,” he asked.