OPINION | Delhi Chokes: Reading BJP & AAP Pledges Shows Why Smog Won't Clear Without Political Consensus
Delhi Pollution: This week’s India Gate protest against Delhi’s deadly smog saw parents and children chanting “Breathing is killing us” before the police detained nearly 100 demonstrators, including minors and the elderly, under Section 163 BNSS. The crackdown came as the city’s average AQI hit 425 (“severe”), with hotspots like Rohini at 435, equivalent to smoking 11 cigarettes a day. While official data claims a slight year-on-year improvement, independent citizen monitors show AQI levels breaching 1000, exposing glaring underreporting by government systems like SAFAR and CPCB. This data gap masks the real emergency and weakens accountability.
Yet, Delhi’s worsening air remains politically invisible. Neither the Aam Aadmi Party nor the Bharatiya Janata Party, in their 2025 Assembly manifestos, offer any coherent roadmap to clean the capital’s air, only token gestures buried amid welfare and infrastructure promises. Pollution control has become a bureaucratic exercise, not a moral or electoral issue. Until clean air becomes central to Delhi’s politics, shaping votes and manifestos alike, emergency measures like GRAP will remain band-aids on a collapsing lung. The crisis is no longer about data or wind speed; it is about the absence of political will to let Delhi breathe.
BJP's Rhetorical Flourish: Bold Targets, Blurry Execution
The BJP’s 2025 manifesto mentions “pollution” 12 times, placing it at the heart of its “Viksit Delhi” vision. Yet the promises remain largely aspirational. The proposed “Delhi Clean Air Mission” targets a 50% reduction in PM2.5 and PM10 levels by 2030, halving the AQI and “poor air days”, through measures like deploying mechanical sweepers in 272 wards, paving 500 km of roads, installing WAYU purifiers at 10 hotspots including Anand Vihar, shifting 50% of vehicles to EVs, expanding waste-to-energy capacity at Ghazipur, developing urban forests, and treating 1,000 MGD of sewage.
However, the plan lacks milestones, funding details, or measurable metrics, echoing the National Clean Air Programme’s 40% shortfall by 2024. The EV “incentives” are devoid of subsidy clarity and fail to confront the 40% contribution of vehicles to city emissions, even as car ownership grows 15% annually. A proposed SIT probe to assign blame replaces self-accountability.
After Diwali, when Delhi’s air turned nearly unbreathable, the BJP swiftly blamed Punjab’s AAP government for stubble burning, ironically mirroring AAP’s earlier attacks on the Congress. Despite commanding four engines of governance, the Delhi government, Centre, municipality, and DDA, the BJP’s response remains indistinguishable from the politics of evasion it critiques.
AAP's Stunning Silence: From Poll Promises to Policy Blind Spot
Delhi, the world's most polluted for six years to 2024 (200+ days over AQI 300), sees AAP's 2025 manifesto ignore "air pollution" entirely, unlike 2020's one-third AQI cut via 5,000 e-buses and odd-even, which electrified 10% buses but missed broader cuts.
At 50 pages on electricity and safety, it touts side wins: 80 lakh trees since 2015, CNG curbing 15% transport pollution, banning old diesels (12% black carbon drop). Omission spotlights lapses: 2023 AQI averaged 164 under AAP, GRAP III-IV 45 days yearly (Rs 1.5 lakh crore health costs), fueling 20% child pneumonia.
It signals fatigue or calculus; voters prioritise jobs over pollution. Past "zero tolerance" on dust/wetlands lagged: 25% PM10 from unregulated construction, 60% anti-smog tower compliance (30% underperformance). AAP blamed 69% external PM2.5, but Delhi's 31% share demands leadership. This erodes trust (70% see it as a top need), dooming solutions via silos and no joint pacts, forcing reactive GRAP.
AAP’s Stunning Silence: From Poll Promises to Policy Blind Spot
If the BJP’s manifesto suffers from vagueness, the Aam Aadmi Party’s 2025 document suffers from omission. In a city ranked the world’s most polluted for six consecutive years till 2024, with over 200 days annually crossing an AQI of 300, the ruling party’s complete silence on air pollution in its latest manifesto borders on political amnesia. This is not just a missed paragraph; it’s a missed responsibility.
The contrast with 2020 is striking. Then, the AAP promised to cut pollution by one-third through 5,000 electric buses, an expanded odd-even scheme, and strict enforcement on dust and construction waste. Five years later, around 10% of buses are electric, a meaningful but insufficient start, while broader emission reductions have stalled. The new manifesto devotes over 50 pages to electricity and women’s safety but offers only side references: 80 lakh trees planted since 2015, CNG expansion cutting transport emissions by 15%, and old-diesel bans linked to a 12% fall in black carbon.
Yet, the data tell another story. Delhi’s average AQI under AAP in 2023 stood at 164, “unhealthy”, with GRAP Stage III–IV invoked on 45 days and an estimated Rs 1.5 lakh crore annual health burden. Nearly 20% of city pneumonia cases in children are pollution-linked. AAP often deflects, arguing that 69% of particulate matter blows in from outside Delhi. True, but Delhi’s 31% share still demands leadership, not lament.
The omission signals political fatigue, or an electoral calculus that voters care more about jobs and subsidies than clean air. Either way, it erodes credibility. When a ruling party that once declared “zero tolerance” for dust now underperforms on anti-smog towers (with 60% operating below design efficiency) and leaves 25% of PM10 unchecked from construction, it concedes the moral ground. The absence of pollution in AAP’s 2025 manifesto is not just silence, it’s abdication.
Treat Clean Air as a Political Priority
Delhi’s smog is no longer just an environmental crisis; it is a political one. For decades, air pollution has remained outside the arena of electoral competition, buried beneath promises of subsidies, electricity, and welfare. Yet with nearly 50,000 deaths annually and billions lost in productivity, clean air deserves to be a defining political issue, not a seasonal talking point.
The truth is simple: politicians act on what wins votes. Until Delhi’s voters demand clear air action plans, specific targets, budgets, and accountability, no party will treat pollution as urgent. Both BJP and AAP reflect this political apathy: one counts mentions, the other offers silence.
Real change will come only when clean air becomes a campaign issue, a debate theme, and a governance benchmark. Delhi must turn pollution into a test of political credibility, because only when elections are fought on who can make the city breathe better will Delhi finally start to clear its air.
Shared Failures: No One Escapes the Smog's Blame
Delhi’s poison air is everyone’s failure; the Centre, the state, and the opposition are all complicit in a deadly blame game. While children choke, no leader owns the crisis.
Who even knows India’s Environment Minister? Bhupendra Yadav, invisible to most, has held just three pollution reviews this year, none with NCR Chief Ministers. No summit with Delhi’s Rekha Gupta, Haryana’s Nayab Saini, UP’s Yogi Adityanath, Punjab’s Bhagwant Mann, or Rajasthan’s counsel. Delhi pleads for 69% of its smog to come from outside, yet Yadav skips the one table where real deals could be struck.
No pact on stubble, no joint war on kilns, no shared funds. The Centre points fingers, AAP cries “external,” BJP promises probes, meanwhile, CAQM limps on a shoestring budget. This isn’t governance; it’s political cowardice. Clean air demands leaders who meet, not memos. Until they do, Delhi suffocates alone.
(Ghosh teaches journalism at St Xavier's College, Kolkata, and is an author)
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