New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday, October 22, inaugurated 10 projects worth ₹2,827.11 crore and laid the foundation stones for 33 projects worth ₹6,114.11 crore — a combined 43 projects totalling ₹8,941.22 crore — for the Delhi Jal Board’s Yamuna-cleaning mission, at an event in Dwarka.
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, who was present at the event, said the goal is to connect every household to the sewer network and every sewer line to a sewage treatment plant, so that no untreated wastewater enters the Yamuna. Mr. Shah set a clean-river deadline of 2029, giving the mission a firm time horizon.
The flagship projects announced include a new 124 MGD sewage treatment plant at Okhla worth ₹1,161 crore, the upgradation of eight existing STPs — raising their combined capacity from 78.2 MGD to 140.8 MGD — along with 29 decentralised STPs, a 1,034-km sewer network, a 477 MLD water treatment plant at Chandrawal, and a 4.5-km trunk drain in Mundka. Together, they are designed to plug the gaps through which untreated sewage has long flowed into the river.
Mr. Shah described the projects as the “backbone” of the Yamuna-cleaning effort, asserting that the government has already covered over 40 per cent of the journey toward a clean river. Delhi Water Minister Parvesh Sahib Singh was also present at the event.
The announcements come on the heels of the ‘Chalo Yamuna’ campaign on October 18, in which around 35,000 people cleaned 70 locations along the river and removed 76,755 kg of waste — a public mobilisation the government has cited as evidence of growing civic ownership of the river’s revival.
The Yamuna has been at the centre of Delhi’s environmental politics for decades, with successive governments announcing cleaning drives that fell short of their promises. The scale of Thursday’s package — 43 projects spanning treatment, sewerage and drainage — is among the largest single outlays yet for the river, and the 2029 deadline gives the mission a measurable yardstick.
Large infrastructure announcements, of course, are only the first step. The real test will lie in execution: completing the plants on schedule, ensuring the new sewer networks actually connect households, and maintaining treatment quality year after year. Past experience has shown that announcements outpace outcomes on this front.
Whether the mission succeeds will be judged not in press conferences but in the river itself: in dissolved-oxygen levels, in the disappearance of froth and stench, and in a Yamuna that Delhi can once again claim with pride. The clock, as Mr. Shah made clear, is now ticking.
