Delhi govt on course to remove mountains of garbage: Kejriwal

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal inspected the Bhalswa landfill in north Delhi on Saturday and said over 4.5 million tonne of garbage will be removed from the site by May 15, 2024. Kejriwal said that nearly 35 acres of land will subsequently be reclaimed, adding that the work was progressing at a fast pace.

- Alok KN Mishra

"We promised the people of Delhi that we would remove the garbage hills in Delhi. The target was set to remove 1.4 million tonne of garbage from Bhalswa by September 30. The agency has already removed more than 1.8 million tonne. With this speed, it is expected that by May 15, 2024, instead of the designated target of 3 million tonne, 4.5 million tonne of garbage will be removed," Kejriwal said.

Delhi is sitting on around 27 million tonne of waste across three landfills at Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Okhla.

Clearing Delhi's garbage mountains was the first of the 10 "guarantees" that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made in the run-up to the civic polls in December 2022. After winning the elections, the AAP-led MCD on March 3 this year announced that the project has been expedited, with a target to clear Okhla by December 2023, Bhalswa by March 2024, and Ghazipur by December 2024.

The erstwhile three municipal corporations in July 2019 began an ambitious project to clear the three landfills in Delhi through the process of biomining after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered that the Capital's legacy waste dumps be cleared within a year.