Kejriwal replies to EC on poisoning Yamuna river, says not just me, Punjab CM also flagged issue to Haryana

AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal on Friday submitted his response to the Election Commission and defended his allegations against the Haryana government of deliberately poisoning the Yamuna river.

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He said that both the Delhi and Punjab Chief Ministers had repeatedly alerted Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Saini about the alarming levels of ammonia in the Yamuna, but he failed to act.

Kejriwal told the Commission that after finding highly toxic water with high levels of ammonia being sent to Delhi from Haryana, the Delhi Chief Minister had called the Haryana Chief Minister in the last week of December and requested him to either take steps to reduce the ammonia or provide additional water to dilute it.

"Though the Haryana CM assured that he would take necessary steps, however, he did not. Subsequently, the Delhi CM again called him several times. After a few calls, the Haryana CM stopped taking the Delhi CM's calls," Kejriwal said in the letter.

He alleged that Haryana CM Saini did nothing to mitigate the situation and, meanwhile, ammonia levels kept increasing.

Subsequently, according to the AAP convener, the Punjab CM also called the Haryana CM on behalf of the Delhi CM and spoke to him multiple times during this period.

"It also indicated that the decision to pollute the Yamuna or not to solve the problem by providing additional water was being taken at the highest political levels," Kejriwal alleged in the letter.

The AAP convener stated that the ammonia levels started increasing very sharply from January 15 onward (around 3.2 ppm on January 15) and reached 7 ppm a few days later.

"At this stage, it was felt that there was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Haryana CM to influence the Delhi elections by sending polluted water to Delhi with very high levels of ammonia. When the grievance remained unresolved and ammonia levels reached the unprecedented levels of 7 ppm, the Delhi Chief Minister, Ms. Atishi, was forced to do a press conference on January 27," Kejriwal stated.

The former CM quoted Atishi's tweet in his letter and said that the statement made by him was in continuation of the above sequence of events and thus in relation to ammonia only.

"The sequence of events clearly establishes that there was a deliberate conspiracy on the part of the Haryana CM, who happens to be from the BJP, to influence the Delhi elections by sending highly polluted waters to Delhi. He knew very well that this would create artificial water scarcity in Delhi, whose blame would lie on the AAP government in Delhi," Kejriwal said and demanded that a criminal case be registered against Saini.

The AAP convener also accused Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar of "hounding" him for his statements. "The alacrity with which the CEC has acted against me when I was merely acting on an issue of very high public importance and have averted a huge public crisis in Delhi is baffling. Equally baffling is the CEC's refusal to direct Haryana to stop polluting Delhi's waters," Kejriwal said.