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Dadumajra landfill: HC tells Chandigarh MC to present solutions to clear waste
Punjab and Haryana high court questions why is the issue continuing to linger when there are technologies available to resolve it
The Punjab and Haryana high court has directed the Chandigarh municipal corporation to present the proposed solutions and contract awarded for clearing the Dadumajra garbage dump before the court on November 16.
The directions by the division bench of acting chief justice Ritu Bahri and justice Nidhi Gupta came on a combined public interest litigation (PIL) on the Dadumajra landfill.
Directing MC to present the contract in court, HC told it to explain how it will clear the garbage mountains. “When there are technologies available to resolve this issue, why is it continuing to linger?” remarked the court.
The matter pertains to a PIL filed by advocate Amit Sharma in 2021 that was merged with the 2016 petition of Dadumajra resident Dipti, represented by advocate Ranjan Lakhanpal.
In July this year, Sharma had filed a perjury application against the municipal corporation (MC) in response to its latest in a series of action taken reports. He had accused MC of presenting false information before the court. For instance, MC claimed there was a wall around the dump, while a significant portion had collapsed within a year of it being built and leachate was flowing on the roads.
On Wednesday, the MC counsel countered this charge by asserting that their work was progressing as planned and they had signed a new contract. The corporation claimed that one of the three dumps at Dadumajra had been cleared, which Sharma refuted by saying that legacy waste had merely been covered by a layer of soil and leachate continued to flow.
Sharma alleged that despite claims of progress, the waste crisis had intensified, with the number of garbage dumps rising from one to three from 2021 to 2023. The processing of waste had fallen from 13% in 2020 to less than 10% in 2022, while hundreds of crores of taxpayers’ money were being spent on new contracts.
Citing successful waste management models, Sharma referred to Indore’s rapid resolution of its garbage mountain within six months at a fraction of the cost. NITTTR in Chandigarh, he told the court, had also proposed a cost-effective solution.
