Supreme Court seeks ‘concrete action plan’ to fix Delhi’s garbage woes

Firefighting vehicles at the Ghazipur Landfill area in New Delhi on April 22, 2024.

It’s a “shocking state of affairs” that Delhi is producing 3,000 tonne more municipal solid waste every day than it can treat, the Supreme Court lamented Monday as it sought responses from the civic bodies and called for a “concrete action plan” by May 10 from the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas.

Alarmed by the untreated solid waste adding to the pollution load in the Capital, a bench of justices AS Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan said: “In Delhi, 11,000 tonne of municipal solid waste (MSW) is being generated when it has a capacity of treating only 8000 tonne. How can it happen in the capital city that 3,000 tonne of solid waste is going untreated? It’s a shocking state of affairs.”

The court was hearing a petition on pollution in Delhi filed by environmental activist and lawyer MC Mehta in 1985, in which orders have been passed from time to time. The court was apprised on April 19 by CAQM of steps taken to curb pollution under a multipronged approach.

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With regards to this report, the bench raised questions on the implementation of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, fixing responsibilities on the municipal authorities for segregation, disposal and treatment of solid waste.

Solid waste is term used to describe all kinds of waste — domestic, sanitary, commercial, institutional, catering and market, agriculture and dairy, horticulture, biomedical, battery and electronics, and silt removed from drains.

“The state should stop grants for development of more residential colonies, or else more MSW will be generated,” the bench observed as it issued notice to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and the Delhi Cantonment Board.

“We want all authorities to respond on the implementation of 2016 Rules as it is a sad state of affairs that MCD has so far established capacity of processing only 8,000 tonne waste,” the bench said.

The CAQM report pointed out that “further capacity augmentation of about 7,000 tonne per day is underway” and this could be more than sufficient to cater to the current load. At present, the report said, “a total legacy solid waste of around 280 lakh metric tonne (MT) is dumped at the three landfill sites – Bhalsawa, Ghazipur, and Okhla — is being liquidated, and about 129 lakh MT MSW has so far been bio-mined.”

The Okhla dump site has stopped receiving any fresh municipal solid waste, it added.

Additional solicitor general (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati suggested that CAQM has all authorities on board and could examine the issue.

Taking this on record, the bench posted the matter for hearing on May 13. “We direct CAQM to submit a report on the non-compliance of 2016 Rules. The commission shall call a meeting of the three authorities (MCD, NDMC, Delhi Cantonment Board) responsible for complying with 2016 Rules. A concrete action plan will be devised and submitted to the court by May 10,” the bench said.

The CAQM report also focused on other causes of pollution in Delhi, which included dust pollution from construction sites, and farm fires in neighbouring states. The commission noticed that construction and development (C&D) activities contribute heavily to Delhi’s pollution and to curb this, orders were issued that all C&D projects with plot area of more than 500 square metres be registered on a web portal for remote monitoring.

Going by the data provided by CAQM, the bench observed that in 2023 “out of the total number of non-compliant C&D activity sites, action of closure was taken against selected few”. The report showed that out of 4,802 non-compliant sites, only 810 were closed.

On farm fires, CAQM submitted that due to the action plan on prevention and control of stubble-burning, there has been a progressive decline in the farm fires over the years for the period between September 15 to November 30. To be sure, the total area set on fire is regarded by experts as a better metric to measure stubble-burning than the number of farm fires.

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