Pollution politics: Can BJP deliver where AAP fell short?

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The recently concluded Assembly elections for Delhi, finally allowed the oft-ignored air pollution issue to take centre stage. During the campaigns, three major political parties i.e., the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)  made numerous competing promises to address the prolonged health emergency in the national capital. As per the recently carried out Lokniti-CSDS Survey, covering 3,137 respondents across 28 assembly constituencies, more than eight of every 10 respondents expressed their dissatisfaction with the air pollution and nonavailability of clean drinking water.

Even beyond Delhi’s border, several parts of Northern India were blanketed in a toxic and poisonous haze for months, with AQI levels worsening with each passing day, leaving Delhi’s residents with little cohesive response from key political actors.

The recent Delhi elections took place amid one of the worst air pollution crises. Leading up to the elections, the well-known environmental think tank, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) released a report highlighting the concerns related to public health due to the worsening levels of the Air Quality Index (AQI). Even beyond Delhi’s border, several parts of Northern India were blanketed in a toxic and poisonous haze for months, with AQI levels worsening with each passing day, leaving Delhi’s residents with little cohesive response from key political actors. While the issue has been persistently featured in manifestos and speeches, the question remains whether these promises will materialise into positive outcomes.

Shifting focus of manifestos from 2020 to 2025 in Assembly elections

When elections are on the horizon, political parties rarely fail to capitalise on the topical issues. , AAP, BJP, and INC  made several promises in their manifestos around the issues of air pollution and cleaning of the Yamuna River in the last two assembly elections.

For instance, the  AAP’s approach to combatting air pollution in the 2020 polls was rather ambitious and visionary, where the party promised to reduce pollution by one-third and to plant 2 crore trees for a greener Delhi. However, during the 2025 election campaign, its focus shifted towards Yamuna cleaning (largely in the light of major controversies over former Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal’s accusation that Yamuna water was being poisoned by Haryana) and with no emphasis on combating air pollution through pollution targets like PM 2.5 and AQI reductions. This certainly indicated the AAP government’s failure to fulfil their previously made promises.

On the other hand, the BJP’s 2020 manifesto had thrown its emphasis on infrastructural aspects as it pledged to induct 10,000 ‘green’ buses. In the 2025 campaign, the party’s approach was more holistic and consisted of long-term efforts to mitigate air pollution. The party manifesto promised to halve the AQI by 2030 and reduce PM-2.5 and PM-10 by 50 percent under the Delhi Clean Air Mission. They also committed to a 50 percent transition of vehicles to electric.

In the 2020 elections, INC’s manifesto emphasised electric mobility like the allocation of 25 percent of the state budget to pollution control, and turning Delhi into India’s first Electric Vehicle (EV) city. In 2025, the party's focus shifted to the structural measures of imposing penalties for waste burning, regulating construction material dumping, and promising relief for unorganised workers affected by the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).

The priorities of the parties took a noticeable shift towards specific structural measures like AQI and PM 2.5 and a renewed focus on the cleaning of Yamuna.

To sum up, in 2020 the three major parties strongly emphasised the solution of electric mobility to combat air pollution like AAP’s promise to subsidise EV adoption and BJP’s ‘10,000 green buses’ commitment. In the recent elections, the priorities of the parties took a noticeable shift towards specific structural measures like AQI and PM 2.5 and a renewed focus on the cleaning of Yamuna.

Table: A Comparison of Party Manifestos on Air Pollution/Yamuna

AAP’s predicament raises doubt about an early solution.

While the promises are galore on air pollution and related issues, the real question is whether one would see some reasonable progress on these pressing issues. A quick post-mortem on AAP’s 10-year political record in office hardly inspires confidence. For instance, the AAP won the 2020 polls with many grand promises on combating air pollution and early clean-up of Yamuna. However, years later, the river has only worsened, becoming even more polluted and contaminated.

Cleaning of the Yamuna River has been one of the longstanding poll issues since several assembly elections. In 2020, AAP’s National Convener and Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, had pledged to bring Yamuna back to its pristine form, even urging voters to reject him next time around, if otherwise. However,  the reality is stark. As per the latest reports by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, around 170 million gallons per day (MGD) of untreated wastewater goes into the Yamuna River. The faecal levels, depicting untreated sewage and high-level pollution in the river reached an all-time high last year. Similarly, on air pollution, AAP failed to reduce air pollution, compared to the 2020 levels.  As per the World Air Quality Report by IQAir,  Delhi remains the most polluted capital city in the world.

The faecal levels, depicting untreated sewage and high-level pollution in the river reached an all-time high last year.

AAP’s decade-long rule has reflected a track record of high promises but dismal deliverables. It is undeniable, that a key factor which significantly deterred the AAP government from implementing its commitments was the constant tussle between the AAP-led Delhi Government and the BJP-led central oversight under the Governor. c. Besides, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA),  the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) are responsible for many of the implementations. Nonetheless, power in the national capital was until very recently shared between different governments and agencies. Beyond these structural hurdles, the AAP failed to galvanise efforts and trigger public opinion to tackle the capital and its neighbourhood’s most intractable challenges.

Conclusion

While the issue of air pollution emerged as the key promise of all parties in recent polls, one has to wait and watch how the issue gets redressed. The BJP, which has returned to Delhi elections after almost 27 years since 1998 has its hands full as far as the city’s air pollution, and the status of Yamuna are concerned. Having adopted a path nearly identical to AAP’s, will the BJP be able to deliver the results in these next five years that AAP failed to fulfil in its 10 years of being at the helm of the capital’s government? With factors like industrial emissions, and stubble burning across states, which requires inter-state coordination between Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh, it necessitates a collaborative approach. Having a “double-engine sarkar”, the ruling BJP has a rare and historic opportunity to rejig the national capital’s pollution story.

Prarthna Bhattacharya is a Research Intern at the Observer Research Foundation.

^[1] https://indianexpress.com/elections/delhi-focus-on-expressways-water-disputes-as-bjp-releases-manifesto-6244503/

• Domestic Politics and Governance
• India
• 2025 delhi assembly elections
• air pollution in delhi
• air pollution problem in delhi
• aqi index in delhi
• Delhi elections 2025
• delhi elections issues
• key issues for delhi voters
• yamuna clean up
• yamuna cleaning delhi

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