NEW DELHI: Garbage will be a major issue when people decide who to vote for on Feb 5. There is exasperation all round at the continuing struggle with managing the overused landfills, poor waste management and non-adherence to the guidelines under the Solid Waste Management Bylaws. Poll assurance on these aspects of the city’s governance have fallen by the wayside and the electorate is wary now.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has three exhausted landfills at Okhla, Ghazipur and Bhalswa, where over 160 lakh tonnes of legacy waste lie and 3,000-3,500 tonnes of fresh waste continues to be dumped at the latter two landfills. At the time of the previous assembly polls, the Ghazipur landfill had reached a height of 65 metres, just 8 metres short of the Qutub Minar.
During the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 in 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Ghazipur landfill had to be flattened. At this time, BJP was at the helm in MCD, being the ruling party there for 15 years. Earlier in 2019, the National Green Tribunal expressed serious concern at the unhygienic conditions created by the garbage mounds, MCD initiated the first phase of biomining operations in 2020. The Union housing and urban affairs ministry allocated Rs 1,395.6 crore under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) 2.0 for the remediation and biomining of waste at the three sites.
But the performance has been lackadaisical. Except for the Bhalswa landfill, where 45 lakh tonnes of legacy waste was processed within the planned time frame, only 30 lakh tonnes were processed at Okhla and 14 lakh tonnes at Ghazipur. Grabbing the political opportunity afforded by this, AAP conducted site inspections before the 2020 assembly elections and criticised BJP’s ineffective approach to managing solid waste and promising to flatten these sites using ‘scientific’ approaches.
At Ghazipur, then AAP deputy CM Manish Sisodia claimed at an election meeting that party national convener Arvind Kejriwal, being an engineer, possessed the blueprint to rid the city of garbage. AAP incorporated waste disposal in its plank, contending that mismanagement and corruption in MCD had caused the sanitation crisis. He also alleged that the BJP-led MCD planned to create 16 more landfills instead of clearing the three already saturated sites.
Public sanitation gained renewed attention before MCD elections in Dec 2022, with AAP promising to improve waste collection from unauthorised colonies. In March 2023, after triumphing in the civic polls, Kejriwal visited the Bhalswa landfill and committed to flattening the site within 12 months.
Fresh efforts were also made to improve segregation at the source, including organising meetings with RWAs and market associations. Despite these initial efforts, the deadlines for flattening the landfills lapsed repeatedly. Segregation at source too has come a cropper with MCD submitting in an affidavit to the Supreme Court that only 55% of the waste generated in the municipal wards was being segregated at source.
“Lack of political will accompanied by reluctance of the general public in segregating waste are the reasons for the slow progress,” claimed a municipal official, pointing out how they have been unable to impose penalties as per norms on those not segregating waste.
Besides landfills, other waste management projects too have exceeded their designated timeframes and been given several extensions. The door-to-door waste collection in MCD’s central zone wards suffered considerably as the current concessionaire refused to work at the previous rates. The process to appoint a new concessionaire is pending. In the west zone, people are complaining about the deterioration in sanitation services.
Politics, other than electoral commitments, have also affected the management of waste in the city. MCD has wrangled for two years in forming the standing committee, which has the prerogative to clear all high-budget projects. On MCD approaching it last year, the Supreme Court transferred the standing committee’s approving authority to the commissioner to enable six waste management projects, including landfill bioremediation, to be initiated.
Sitting in the opposition in MCD now, BJP has turned the tables and is questioning AAP’s ability to fulfil its election pledges. Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva criticised AAP for pushing the landfill flattening deadline to 2028. “After NGT’s direction, we formulated a plan to level the landfill, got funds from the Centre, assigned agencies, initiated a process for establishing a waste-to-energy plant at Tehkhand and arranged for the installation of sufficient trommel machines at the landfills,” claimed Sachdev. “Our then MP Gautam Gambhir visited the Ghazipur site several times, and things started rolling despite Delhi govt not releasing funds to MCD on time. After AAP took over MCD, everything has come to a standstill.”
Lieutenant governor VK Saxena, who has variously inspected landfills and established daily waste clearance targets, recently expressed displeasure at the slow progress. He instructed MCD to remove 30 lakh metric tonnes of waste from each of the three landfills in one year, rather than two, and ensure scientific levelling of the land for future use.
AAP retorted that since coming to power in MCD in Dec 2022, it had successfully reduced around 80% of the legacy waste at the Bhalswa landfill site, with work going on steadily at the other two landfill sites. “AAP has accomplished in two years what BJP failed to do in 15 years,” said an AAP statement.
The state govt too has held BJP responsible for the inefficient management and malpractices in MCD that exacerbated the waste crisis.
A civic expert, however, commented, “But even after improving sanitation, which was one of the 10 commitments AAP made upon assuming control of MCD in 2022, the city continues to face fundamental sanitation challenges. Due to the non-formation of the standing committee even two years after the civic elections, political finger-pointing and court interventions on waste management decisions, the second phase of biomining at the three landfills has been consistently delayed.”
Meanwhile, Congress, the third contender in the assembly polls, has been blaming both parties for indulging in a prolonged political slugfest rather than resolving the sanitation problem.
