Dadu Majra dump: High Court directs Chandigarh MC to show progress on ground

Chandigarh, December 6

The Punjab and Haryana High Court today directed the Chandigarh Municipal Commission to show progress on the ground and take steps to resolve the issue of Dadu Majra dump at the earliest.

The Bench of Chief Justice Ravi Shanker Jha and Justice Arun Palli also made it clear the stench and the garbage was required to go.

The Bench made it clear a tangible improvement on the ground at Dadu Majra was a must. The directions and assertion came on a bunch of petitions filed against the MC and other respondents by city advocate Amit Sharma and Dipti Singh through counsel Ranjan Lakhanpal.

As the case came up for resumed hearing, Sharma responded to an action taken report (ATR) submitted by the MC in July saying the people were suffering unimaginably as the corporation failed to fulfil its constitutional and statutory obligations.

He submitted there was no change on the ground in Dadu Majra and the ATR was a mere repetition of the same assurances about legacy mining and compliance with the solid waste management rules.

He added the corporation had been submitting similar action plans to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and the High Court for years without any change on the ground at Dadu Majra, where people continued to suffer amidst stench and leachate.

Referring to the bioremediation project launched this September, Sharma added the previous bio-mining project was started by the MC in 2019 with the assurance it would be completed in 18 months. But it was awaiting completion with the corporation now saying it would be completed by March next.

“These ATRs in 2022 are yet another brazen attempt to mislead this court and kick the can down the road by another 43 months. Be it legacy mining or composting, MC’s latest ATR shows their inefficiencies. The MC data also shows only five per cent of the wet waste is being processed as compost. The rest is going back to the dump site as inert,” he said.

Sharma claimed that National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research (NITTTR), run by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, in Sector 26, Chandigarh, had given in writing they could solve the issue of legacy waste within 150 days at a cost of Rs 14-15 crore.