Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday, June 9, 2026 chaired a review meeting on measures to clean the Yamuna river, announcing a fresh inter-agency agreement to tackle dairy waste and accelerating sewage treatment infrastructure across Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.

What Shah Announced

Shah stated that the Modi government is committed to cleaning the Yamuna — 'मोदी सरकार यमुना को स्वच्छ बनाने के लिए कटिबद्ध है' ['The Modi government is committed to making the Yamuna clean']. The meeting produced three headline outcomes: an MoU between the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) to prevent dairy-sector waste from entering the river, a silt-removal milestone, and a firm deadline for new sewage treatment plants.

Under the proposed MoU, dairy effluents from Delhi's dairy sector will be processed to generate gobar gas (biogas) and organic manure rather than being discharged into the river — a circular-economy approach that converts a pollution source into an agricultural and energy resource.

Context

The Yamuna, a major tributary of the Ganga passing through the Delhi-NCR region, has long been burdened by untreated sewage, industrial effluents, and silt runoff from multiple upstream states. Central and state governments have pursued river-cleaning efforts since the Yamuna Action Plan phases beginning in 1993, and the Namami Gange programme launched in 2014 included dedicated Yamuna pollution-abatement components with inter-state coordination mechanisms.

Despite successive programmes, the river's water quality — particularly through Delhi — has remained a persistent policy and public-health challenge, drawing repeated intervention from the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The current review signals renewed central-level attention to implementation gaps.

Policy Backdrop

On silt removal, Shah's post stated that 97 per cent of the targeted 28.57 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of silt from drains flowing into the Yamuna has already been extracted this year. Crucially, the extracted silt is to be channelled into construction projects to prevent it from re-entering the river — another instance of waste-to-resource conversion embedded in the cleanup strategy.

On sewage treatment, Shah noted that 129 Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) are now operational across Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh. An additional 59 STPs are slated for completion by end-2027, which would significantly expand the region's capacity to intercept raw sewage before it reaches the Yamuna. The three-state coordination framework reflects the river's cross-boundary nature and the central government's role in brokering joint action.

Stakeholders and Impact

Delhi residents stand to benefit most directly from reduced sewage and effluent loads, particularly communities living near the river's banks and those dependent on downstream water supply. Dairy farmers operating in the capital's dairy clusters will need to comply with the new waste-management protocols formalised under the MCD-NDDB agreement, though the shift to biogas and manure production could also generate supplementary income.

The construction sector is identified as a downstream beneficiary of the silt-reuse programme, gaining a low-cost raw material while the river is simultaneously protected from re-siltation. Environmental groups and the NGT, which has issued multiple orders on Yamuna pollution over the years, will likely track delivery against these commitments.

What's Next

The immediate milestones to watch are the formal signing and rollout of the MCD-NDDB MoU, the completion of silt removal to reach the 100 per cent target for the current year, and the construction timeline for the 59 new STPs due by end-2027. Verification of actual silt reuse in construction and the measured impact on river-water quality will be critical tests of whether these announcements translate into ecological improvement on the ground.