Dead Fish in Yamuna: Delhi politicians Probe Who to Blame, Ignoring the Water
A satirical illustration of the political row over dead fish in the Yamuna as Chhath devotees prepare to enter the river.
By AMIT KUMAR
Chhath festival in Delhi tests nerves of Netas, who go rushing to the Yamuna, to show in good and bad lights, depending on which side of the aisle of power they sit. This year, dead fishes in the Yamuna have added a new chapter in the politics of Yamuna and Chhath.,
New Delhi, November 14, 2026 — Chhath festival in Delhi has acquired a sombre note after thousands of dead fishes were sighted in the Yamuna River. While the dead fishes floated in highly polluted Yamuna, Delhi Cabinet in full strength celebrated the cruise safari launch at Sonia Vihar.
Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had offered prayers at a patch of the Yamuna which had distinctive water colour. The Opposition, principally the Aam Aadmi Party, caught hold of a drone footage to allege that Modi had stepped into a mineral water pool.
Chhath festival in Delhi could launch cartoonists and comedians on thought trails. Netas in Delhi bend on their backs, to seek blessings of the faithfuls. Poorvanchalis in Delhi almost now number 40 percent, and their wrath can scorch electoral catchment of political parties.
Thousands of dead fish in the Yamuna have brought the capital’s politicians together in a spirit of total agreement: someone else did it.
PTI reported that videos showed large numbers of dead fish near the river’s Sonia Vihar stretch, while the exact cause remained unconfirmed. Water pollution is a plausible theory. The government’s theory was more creative. Water Minister Parvesh Verma accused AAP of staging the incident, alleging, in the words PTI quoted, that its workers were “buying dead fish from the market” to defame the government. It is the first recorded case of the opposition being charged with a fish-market supply chain.
AAP’s Saurabh Bharadwaj took the allegation seriously, asking where the party would get thousands of dead fish. He also asked how anyone could dump so many without being noticed or caught on CCTV, and demanded that water samples be collected. It is an elegant defence: AAP has not been accused of killing the fish, only of fish-trafficking, and denies both. Meanwhile, the flood and irrigation department has maintained that the fish issue does not fall under its purview. The fish, it appears, belong to no department. They died of nobody’s jurisdiction.
One party says the river is clean and the fish are fake. The other says the fish are real and the river is not. Neither has proposed the simplest way to settle it, which is for someone to test the water. Residents have noted that fasting Chhath devotees will stand knee-deep in the same river, a detail that interests everyone except the quarrel.
The BJP linked the incident to the launch of the Namo Yamuna River Safari, an electric river cruise service, and called it an attempt to mar the atmosphere. We are left with the image of a government launching a river cruise on a river it says is clean, with a thousand fish in the audience, none of them applauding.
Chhath season has become a ritual of Yamuna theatre. Last year, a BJP spokesperson sipped river water on camera to prove it was clean, while AAP delivered a bottle of the stuff to the Chief Minister’s residence and dared her to drink it. AAP also exposed a separate pond carved alongside the river for a ceremonial dip, and claimed the Prime Minister cancelled his visit. Delhi’s river politics now has all the elements of a festival: a sip, a dare, a pond and a fish.
The fish are dead, and the Yamuna remains, to the satisfaction of both sides, a political asset. Nobody has been charged with killing them. Nobody has tested whether the river killed them. The only certainty is that devotees will arrive at the water’s edge, and that the argument over who put the fish there will outlast the festival, and the fish.
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