Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena and AAP govt clash, this time over cleanliness

As the ruling party has mounted its attack on BJP-run Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which is responsible for garbage collection and solid waste management, Saxena has waded into the controversy, taking upon himself to reduce the height of three big garbage mountains in Delhi.

Technically known as legacy waste, the three garbage landfill sites have been increasing in height over the years, with no agency being able to address the solid waste management problem. With MCD elections due after the delimitation exercise, solid waste management has become an easy stick to beat the BJP with. The AAP has initiated a door-to-door campaign against the MCD. The ruling party has already covered two million households.

Saxena, who is considered the Centre’s representative in Delhi, is trying to take the steam out of this aggressive campaign against MCD. As soon as Saxena replaced former bureaucrat Anil Baijal as LG in May, he reached out to the people directly through newspaper advertisements seeking their opinion on how to solve Delhi’s problems, including the mountains of garbage at Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla, pollution in Yamuna and improving ambient air quality. His first field visit as LG was to Ghazipur landfill site.

According to statistics provided by LG Secretariat, legacy waste at landfill sites in the capital has come down from 22.91 million metric tonnes (MMT) in May to 20.3 MMT in September, reduction of 2.61 MMT over the past four months and about 652,000 MMT legacy waste being disposed of every month.

The housing and urban affairs ministry confirmed to ET that the height of Ghazipur landfill site has come down, an unprecedented achievement. Saxena has set a target of 18 months before MCD to raze the three landfill sites. The steps being taken include acquisition of new Trommel machines for processing and segregating waste at the landfill sites, restarting of waste-to-energy plant at Ghazipurand tying up with companies to lift inert and construction and demolition waste free of cost. A fourth waste energy plant will be made operational at Tehkhund this month, said ministry officials.

AAP MCD in-charge Durgesh Pathak, however, claimed that the MCD has failed in keeping Delhi clean. “We have three garbage mountains and they are gearing up to create 16 more garbage mountains… Through our door-to-door campaign we are assuring people that when they will bring Arvind Kejriwal to power in the MCD, we will clean the entire Delhi in no time and Delhi will be in top 10 in Swachh Sarvekshan (cleanliness ranking),” he said.