July 31 new deadline to rid Dadu Majra of trash

Wait to see a legacy waste-free Dadu Majra is set to get longer with the deadline for bioremediation of the remaining trash having been extended to July 31, subject to weather conditions.

In response to a question raised in the Lok Sabha by Chandigarh MP Manish Tewari, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Tokhan Sahu stated that according to information provided by the UT of Chandigarh, the bioremediation of the remaining legacy waste has started and the entire garbage will be cleared by July 31, subject to weather conditions.

During the ongoing Parliament session, Tewari had asked the minister whether the Central Government has a plan to completely clear the dump, if so, by what time the mountain of garbage is expected to be cleared.

The MP said the UT Administration and the Municipal Corporation (MC) had told the NGT that the entire site would be cleared by December 25, 2024. At the Administrator’s Advisory Committee meeting held in August 2024, it was reiterated that the mountain of garbage would be cleared by December 25, 2024, he said.

“When the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Housing and Urban Affairs was in Chandigarh, in response to a question asked by me, the MC told the committee that the dump site, including legacy and concurrent waste, would be cleared by June 2025,” he said.

“In the answer to my question, the government now puts the date at July 31, 2025, and that also with a caveat,” he said, adding that the time lines are arbitrary shifted every couple of weeks.

On the total budgetary expenditure incurred on clearing the garbage dump at Dadu Majra as well as on its maintenance, including the cost of air fresheners, perfumes and odour suppressing measures since April 1, 2019, the minister replied that with the vision to achieving a “Garbage Free” status through source segregation, door-to-door collection and scientific processing of municipal solid waste, the government launched Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) – Urban 2.0 on October 1, 2021. Central Financial Assistance as Central share is provided for the setting up of waste-processing facilities such as remediation of waste dumps, Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), etc to states/UTs on the basis of their City Solid Waste Action Plan.

“As such no separate allocation of fund has been made for the remediation of legacy waste at the dump site. However, funds are released for remediation of waste under Solid Waste Management (SWM) component of SBM-U 2.0, under which Rs 28.50 crore as central share has been approved for Chandigarh,” the minister said.

Tewari said, “The government has ducked the question on how much money has been spent since April 2019 on clearing and managing the dump since April 2019, because the expenditure runs into crores.”

To a question raised by the MP about the total quantity of legacy waste still lying at the dump in Sector 38 West as of January, 2025; and the quantity of concurrent waste being dumped daily at the site, the minister said, “The first and second dumps of legacy waste have already been cleared and the bioremediation of the third dump has been commenced for approximate 2.40 LMT as of January 2025.”