New Delhi, Nov 12 Delhi Mayor Pravesh Wahi on Thursday inspected the Bhalswa landfill site to review ongoing waste clearance work as biomining resumed, and directed officials to speed up the disposal of the remaining 23-25 lakh metric tonnes of legacy waste.
Around 1.02 crore metric tonnes of legacy waste have been cleared from the landfill so far, while the remaining will be disposed of within the stipulated timeframe, Wahi said in a statement.
A new agency has been awarded the contract for waste disposal at the site and officials have been asked to accelerate the work. The progress will be reviewed on a daily basis, he added.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has extended the Bhalswa landfill clearance deadline for the sixth time, pushing it to February 2027 as around 25 lakh metric tonnes of legacy waste remain to be cleared from the site.
The mayor said the MCD would increase the number of machines deployed for waste disposal, with a machine named ‘Vajra’ being installed to speed up the process.
According to officials, approximately 15,000 metric tonnes of waste was being processed per day when the operations were in full swing a few months ago.
“A new concessionaire has been hired and biomining has commenced. We have given them a deadline of December 31,2026, to clear legacy waste and the rest will be cleared in the next few months,” a senior official said.
Wahi said around 30 per cent of the land at the Bhalswa landfill and 60 per cent at the Okhla landfill had been reclaimed through the disposal of legacy waste.
Plans were being drawn up for the future use of the reclaimed land, he added.
He also said the disposal of fresh waste would be expedited to prevent further accumulation at the sites.
Earlier, the MCD had fixed December 31, 2026, as the deadline to clear Bhalswa and Okhla and December 2027 for the Ghazipur landfill.
The civic body has submitted a revised action plan to the Delhi government, pushing Bhalswa’s deadline from December 2026 to February 2027 while retaining December 2026 for Okhla and December 2027 for Ghazipur, officials said.
MCD Commissioner Sanjeev Khirwar, additional commissioners Sanjeev Kumar Mittal and Prasanna Ramaswamy, and other senior civic officials were present during the inspection.
(PTI News)
