Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, accused the previous Arvind Kejriwal-led government of allowing 1,500 metric tonnes of cattle dung to be discharged into the Yamuna every day, and announced that the current Delhi government has signed an agreement with the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) to convert that waste into biogas and organic fertiliser.

Context

Shah posted in Hindi on X, stating: 'Kejriwal and Company har roz 1,500 metric tonne gobar Yamuna ji mein dalti thi' ('Kejriwal and Company used to dump 1,500 metric tonnes of dung into the Yamuna every day'). He added that the new Delhi government has now partnered with the NDDB so that the same dung will be used to produce gas and natural fertiliser, with 'not a single kilogram of dung' going into the river henceforth.

The claim targets former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), whose administration governed Delhi until the BJP returned to power in the capital. The Yamuna's pollution load — driven by untreated sewage, industrial effluent, and dairy waste from the city's large urban dairy clusters — has been a persistent political flashpoint.

Policy Backdrop

The NDDB, a statutory body under the Union Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, has been involved in waste-to-value projects that convert cattle dung into biogas and bio-fertiliser. The GOBAR-DHAN scheme, launched by the central government in 2018, promotes exactly this model — community-level biogas plants that treat animal and agricultural waste as an economic resource rather than a pollutant.

The broader Namami Gange programme, operational since 2014, has sought to reduce pollution entering the Ganga basin, which includes the Yamuna as a major tributary. The NDDB–Delhi government partnership described by Shah represents an extension of these frameworks from rural clusters to the high-density urban dairy concentrations within the National Capital Territory.

Stakeholders and Impact

Delhi's urban dairy owners — who operate thousands of small and large cattle units across the city — stand to be directly affected by any new waste-management mandate arising from the agreement. Residents living along the Yamuna in Delhi, who have long borne the burden of the river's degraded water quality, are the primary intended beneficiaries.

If implemented at scale, channelling 1,500 metric tonnes of daily dung output into biogas plants would reduce a significant organic load from the river while generating clean fuel and fertiliser for local use — a dual environmental and economic dividend aligned with the circular-economy goals of GOBAR-DHAN.

What's Next

The formal details of the NDDB–Delhi government agreement — including timelines, plant locations, and investment commitments — are yet to be made public. Observers will watch for Central Pollution Control Board data on Yamuna water-quality parameters at Delhi monitoring stations as a benchmark for measuring the initiative's real-world impact.

The announcement places Yamuna clean-up squarely at the centre of the BJP's governance narrative in Delhi, setting up a direct contrast with the AAP's decade-long tenure and its record on river pollution — a debate that is likely to intensify as implementation details emerge.