Garbage mounds at Okhla site to disappear by Oct ’25, says Sirsa

Pledging to eliminate Delhi’s towering garbage dumps, Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa inspected the Okhla landfill site on Thursday, announcing that the mountains of waste will be removed by October 2025 — ahead of the initial December deadline.

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Accompanied by Delhi Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh and South Delhi MP Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, the minister said over 30 of the 62-acre landfill had already been reclaimed, with its height reduced from 60 metres to 20 metres.

“If we can dismantle terror camps across the border, we can surely dismantle garbage mountains here in the Capital,” Sirsa remarked, calling the bio-mining effort a defining chapter in Delhi’s environmental turnaround.

He said more than 56 lakh metric tonnes of legacy waste had already been processed and another 20 lakh MT was underway. Advanced segregation methods are being used to convert the waste into soil, inert materials, recyclables and refuse-derived fuel (RDF), which is being sent to cement plants and paper mills.

Taking aim at the AAP, Sirsa said: “While the previous ‘AAPda’ government watched pollution rise, we are removing its root causes. They should be renamed the ‘pollution party’.” Mayor Raja Iqbal Singh said the landfill’s transformation was part of the government’s broader promise of a garbage-free Delhi.

“Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta is herself monitoring the cleanup. We are accountable to people and committed to reclaiming this land for community use,” he said, adding that the area could soon see park development. MP Bidhuri, calling the Okhla landfill the biggest issue in his constituency, expressed confidence in the October 2025 timeline. “The waste mound will be gone well before 2026. A green space will rise in its place,” he said.