In February 2008, she is reported to have claimed that Yamuna would be 70 per cent cleaner before the Games, slated to be held from October 3 to 14. In an abrupt turnaround, she later stated that her Government would not be able to clean the river by then since this was a task that would take at least eight to 10 years, perhaps even decades.

In a clear exposure of the lack of coordination between different agencies of the administrative set-up, the Delhi Jal Board filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court, stating that the cleaning drive would not be over before 2012. The affidavit described the river as a `sewage canal', owing to the 143 unauthorised colonies, 1,080 slums and villages, whose untreated sewage flows into Yamuna.

This sorry admission of administrative failure was also an indictment of a Government which has ruled Delhi for two full successive terms. A sum of Rs 872.15 crore was estimated to have been spent by the Government on the Yamuna cleaning scheme, without having yielded tangible results. For, the river remains filthy and choked with faeces, garbage, chemicals, corpses and dead animals. Its recharge area and flood plains are also rapidly shrinking as a result of indiscriminate colonisation of its environs by the Delhi Development Authority and civic agencies, as well as the Uttar Pradesh Government.

An appraisal of Government attempts to clean up the river since 1993, when the Yamuna Action Plan was initiated, raises the question: What went wrong? Environment Ministries at the Centre and in the States through which Yamuna flows must answer this question.

The river, about a century ago, was clear and pristine. The Imperial Gazetteer of India in 1909 described Yamuna's water as being "clear blue", as compared to Ganga's silt-laden water. Today, a muddy, brackish colour characterises Yamuna's stretch in Delhi -- that is, wherever an expanse is visible. Interestingly, it is believed that the river's water is of "reasonably good quality" from its source in Himalayas till Wazirabad in Delhi. It is only then that the water becomes severely polluted owing to discharge of sewage and industrial waste from drains.

In reply to a question in Parliament last July by a BJP member, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh conceded that the river's water quality had not shown the "desired improvement" ever since the Yamuna Action Plan was launched in 1993. This, despite the money spent and enhancement of sewage treatment capacity.

However, Mr Jairam Ramesh informed Parliament that the Delhi Jal Board planned to tackle the problem through the following measures: Laying interceptor sewers along the Najafgarh, Shahdara and Supplementary drains; enhancing sewage treatment capacity; laying sewage lines in rural areas and unauthorised colonies; desilting peripheral and internal sewers, and so on.