Bhagtanwala residents show the mounds of garbage piled up.
GS Paul
Amritsar, April 23
With the Lok Sabha poll around the corner, Amritsar city’s “solid waste management” issue has taken the centre stage.
After the SAD, the Congress and the AAP failed to address the issue, BJP’s candidate, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, has now promised the electorate to set things in order once voted to power.
Located just 1.8 km away from the Golden Temple, 30-foot high mountains of waste spread on 25 acres of land at Bhagtanwala dump can be spotted from a distance.
Ironically, this dump yard is adjacent to Amritsar grain market and around 60,000 persons residing in the surrounding localities suffer from respiratory and skin diseases.
Though Amritsar had three Local Bodies Ministers — Anil Joshi (SAD-BJP 2012-2017), Navjot Singh Sidhu (Congress 2017-2019) and Inderbir Singh Nijjar (AAP 2022-2023) — seldom any concrete efforts were made to fulfil their pre-poll promises of addressing the issue.
“It is unfortunate that residents have been compelled to live in hell-like conditions for over a decade. Shifting this dump out of the city limits will be on my priority list. I believe that none of the MPs or ministers in the past made sincere efforts to resolve the issue. I appeal to people to elect the person who has the capability and access to get the things done,” said Sandhu.
Prior to the 2017 Assembly poll, the then SAD MLA (South) Inderbir Singh Bolaria had shifted his allegiance to the Congress citing the Bhagtanwala dump issue as one of the core reasons of his differences with the Akali Dal. Though Bolaria was elected again in 2017, the problem remained unresolved.
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