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Waste mgmt agendas cleared by BJP alone: Chandigarh administrator calls meeting of all party councillors
The notice for the meeting came after Chandigarh Congress president HS Lucky and party councillors wrote a letter to the administrator, demanding to declare the House proceeding null and void
Amid objections by the opposition councillors against setting up of an integrated waste processing plant at Dadumajra and their demand to declare all proceedings of the special MC House meeting on June 6 null and void, Punjab governor and UT administrator Banwarilal Purohit has called a meeting of all party councillors on Monday.
The meeting, regarding setting up of the waste management plant, will be held at the UT Secretariat.
The notice for the meeting came after Chandigarh Congress president HS Lucky and party councillors wrote a letter to the administrator, demanding to declare the House proceeding null and void. “The request for proposal (RFP) should be recalled. A new House meeting should be convened under the supervision of the administrator and the agenda pertaining to proposed garbage processing plant should be re-discussed in the interest of the city,” the Congress leaders wrote in the letter.
Besides Congress, AAP leaders were also demanding some time from the administrator to conduct a meeting regarding relocation of the plant from Dadumajra area. AAP councillor Kuldeep Dhalor, along with area residents, has been protesting against setting up of the plant in Dadumajra.
The agenda regarding establishing the new plant was approved by BJP councillors during the June 6 House meeting after mayor Anup Gupta suspended all 13 AAP councillors for a day following their heated verbal spat with local BJP MP Kirron Kher and got them forcibly removed.
“Once again there was a shameful uproar in the MC House meeting. However, all this was pre-planned by the BJP and happened under a conspiracy so that the anti-people agenda of setting up a garbage processing plant at Dadumajra could be passed by removing the AAP councillors from the House,” Prem Garg, president, Chandigarh AAP, had said after the House meeting.
On Friday, MC had floated the RFP for the integrated waste processing plant at Dadumajra despite objections by opposition councillors and area residents.
MCC floats RFP for temporary wet waste processing plant
Meanwhile, taking forward another agenda approved by BJP councillors on June 6, MC on Saturday invited probable bidders for a pre-RFP consultation meeting for selection of an agency to establish a temporary composting plant for wet waste in Dadumajra.
To give final touches to the RFP, the meeting will be held on June 15. The interested bidders need to send their confirmation for the meeting by June 13.
The proposed plant will have the capacity to process 200 metric tonnes (MT) of wet waste daily and will be set up on 5 acres cleared at the Dadumajra landfill through bio-mining of legacy waste.
MC plans to hire a private firm to manage and operate the plant, which will work for two years or till the integrated waste management plant is made operational, whichever is earlier. MC will bear the cost of setting up the temporary plant, while the hired firm will provide machinery, manpower and any other related items.
Chandigarh generates 550 MT waste daily, of which around 374 MT is wet waste while the remaining is dry.
MC is operating a waste processing plant at Dadumajra, whose capacity, even after upgrades and extensions, is less than 200 MT daily. As such, most of city’s daily waste is dumped at the Dadumajra landfill without processing, leading to mountains of waste.
Though MC has initiated the process to set up a new integrated waste processing plant that will process all of the daily waste, it will take around 24 months for it to get operational. In the meantime, MC plans to process the wet waste through the temporary plant.
