Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during his visit at Bhalswa landfill site on Thursday.
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) now heading the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the Bhalswa landfill will be cleared by March 2024.
Hitting out at the AAP chief, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor Mr. Kejriwal was merely repeating the deadline of March 31, 2024, which was given by the former Mayor of erstwhile North Delhi Municipal Corporation, Raja Iqbal Singh, in March 2022, and reaffirmed by the Commissioner MCD after the unification of the civic body in September 2022.
After visiting the landfill, Mr. Kejriwal said, “Initial target was to remove 6,500 tonnes of waste per day, but yesterday [Wednesday] 9,000 tonnes was removed. He also added that by the end of this month, 12,000 tonnes of waste will be removed every day. With the speed at which the work is going on at Bhalswa landfill site, the area would be cleared of all the garbage by March 2024.”
He said that it was after the 2019 order of the NGT that work began to remove waste from this landfill site. At that time there was around 80 lakh tonnes of waste and from 2019 until now, around 30 lakh tonnes of waste has been removed from this site and presently it holds around 50 lakh tonnes of waste, he added.
“Over the last two and a half years or so, 30 lakh tonnes of waste has been removed from here, but the MCD now under the Aam Aadmi Party will work even faster and we are targeting to remove another 30 lakh metric ton of waste by December this year,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
Bhalswa landfill is a 28-year-old site spread across 70 acres. The initial height of the landfill was 65 metres from ground level and when surveyed in 2019, it consisted of 80 lakh tonnes of legacy waste. Since then, 24 lakh tonnes of fresh waste has been dumped at the site and 30.48 lakh tonnes of waste has been bio-mined there, as per an official statement.
Mr. Kapoor has said that it was surprising and shocking to see that a green carpet welcome was accorded to Mr. Kejriwal and others when they visited the landfill site on Thursday. “It’s amazing that someone who claimed to be a common man today wants red carpet welcome at landfill site,” he said.
“It is strange that till the other day Arvind Kejriwal who used to mock BJP leaders is today reaffirming the time schedules for clearance of all three landfill sites fixed by the BJP Mayors,” he said.
