MCD to clean Delhi’s arterial road grid

MCD has 52 mechanical road sweepers for Delhi’s arterial roads, while inner colony road network is cleaned by 50,000 sanitation workers

The proposal to mechanically clean and repair the Capital’s 1,400-km arterial road network, which caters to 70% of the city’s traffic volume, will now be undertaken by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) by significantly increasing the existing resources of the civic body, officials aware of the matter said on Thursday. The proposal for the Delhi government to mechanically clean these arterial roads — with a width of 60ft or more — was initially announced by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in January. Thereafter, then finance minister Kailash Gehlot, in his Budget speech delivered in March, announced that the project will be carried out by the Public Works Department (PWD).

The Delhi cabinet on April 4 approved a proposal by the environment department to purchase 70 mechanical sweeping machines to remove dust on roads maintained by the PWD. (HT Archive)

However, the task will now be executed by the MCD instead.

The civic body currently has a fleet of 52 mechanical road sweepers for Delhi’s arterial roads, while the city’s inner colony road network (5-60ft) is cleaned daily by 50,000 sanitation workers.

MCD has already started consultations with private companies to ramp up services across the 1,400-km road network, with a stakeholders meeting held at the Civic Centre on June 30, officials said.

The first series of user demonstrations will be carried out within next fortnight, and a senior municipal official aware of the development said that directions have been issued to present a fresh proposal to the house of councillors. “We have started consultations, and a meeting was held with eight private companies offering mechanised cleaning solutions on June 30 at MCD headquarter where representatives from CM office along with additional commissioners were present. Both the government and MCD top brass are in the loop,” the official said.

After Gehlot announced that PWD will take over the mechanical cleaning from MCD, the Delhi cabinet on April 4 approved a proposal by the environment department to purchase 70 mechanical sweeping machines to remove dust on roads maintained by the PWD. The cabinet also decided to purchase 250 water sprinkling machines fitted with anti-smog guns, with a sum of ₹2,388 crore to be spent over 7-10 years.

However, municipal commissioner Gyanesh Bharti in an April 16report had flagged that the transfer of road cleaning services from the MCD to PWD will lead to legal and financial complications, as the civic body has signed a contract with private agencies. The report also noted that the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) Act, 1957, mandates that road cleaning is an obligatory function of the MCD.

Subsequently, proposals related to the transfer of cleaning services were kept twice in the house of councillors — on May 2 and June 8. After approving the first proposal on May 2, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led house rejected the second proposal on June 8 and reversed the approval it had previously given.

A senior municipal official associated with the project said that under the revised minutes of the meeting, the executive wing has been asked by the house to put up a preamble (policy proposal), under which MCD will increase its resources to deliver on the project to clean Delhi’s arterial road network. Mayor Shelly Oberoi did not comment on the move.