Delhi’s effort to create artificial rain on Tuesday did not work, even though the plan cost a large amount of money. The experiment was meant to reduce the city’s pollution as the air quality remains in the “very poor” category. The BJP-led Delhi government said that even though rain did not fall, more cloud-seeding trials will take place in the coming days.

This attempt to produce artificial rain cost more than ₹1 crore. The Delhi government had approved ₹3.21 crore for five such trials, which means around ₹64 lakh per trial. On Tuesday, the government conducted two trials, costing nearly ₹1.28 crore in total.

The trials were done with the help of IIT Kanpur. A small aircraft, a Cessna with a single engine, flew over areas of northwest Delhi and nearby NCR. It released 16 chemical flares,  silver iodide and sodium chloride,  into the clouds. These chemicals are meant to help form raindrops.

However, the clouds did not produce rain. Despite this, Delhi’s environment minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa called the trial “successful” because he believes it will help the government understand how much rain can be triggered in real conditions in Delhi.

The trials were delayed twice earlier because of the arrival of the monsoon and continuous rains during the previous months. On Tuesday, the second trial was carried out in outer Delhi areas like Badli.

Officials said the moisture content in the atmosphere was too low, only around 10–15 percent,  which is not suitable for cloud seeding. Still, the government claims that the experiment helped reduce pollution levels in the specific areas where the aircraft operated.

Politics also heated up around the experiment. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) criticized the BJP government. AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj questioned why the trial was conducted when rain was already forecast by the IMD. He sarcastically asked if “Lord Indra” would come down to explain whether rain is natural or artificial. He also played the song “Jhooth bole kauwa kaate” in the background during his press conference to mock the government.

The previous AAP government had planned cloud seeding in 2023 and again last winter but said they could not do it due to lack of central government permissions. BJP leaders have countered by saying AAP only talked and never acted.

Officials said that after cloud seeding, rain can take anywhere between 15 minutes to four hours to occur. But by late evening, IMD confirmed there was no rainfall in Delhi. Even though the first attempt failed, the government plans to conduct 9–10 more trials soon.