Another fire at Ghazipur landfill site & AAP again targets BJP-run MCD

New Delhi: Even as the Ghazipur landfill site caught fire yet again on Saturday night, the Aam Aadmi Party on Sunday lambasted the BJP-ruled East Delhi municipal corporation, with Deputy CM Manish Sisodia squarely blaming the saffron party for the city's garbage problem and other party leaders attacking the party for not having a credible solution to the problem.

The Delhi Fire Services said that a fire had broken out on Saturday night and while no casualty was reported, it took firefighters nearly three hours to douse the flames. This comes days after a massive blaze broke out at the landfill site, which kept burning for over 48 hours.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Kuldeep Kumar posted a video purportedly of the fire incident on Twitter on Saturday, saying, "Ghazipur's mountain of garbage has burnt again, people of Kondli are suffocating..."

On Sunday, his party colleague and AAP MCD in-charge Durgesh Pathak also took up the issue and launched a sharp attack against the BJP-run East MCD for seeking another patch of land in Ghazipur to dump garbage in.

While noting that the BJP had, in 2017, promised to level Delhi's three landfill sites in one year, Pathak said it was unfortunate that "instead of working to dispose of the existing landfill sites, the BJP has asked the Union government for another patch of land belonging to the Ghazipur Paper Mill" — which will essentially create a fourth landfill site in the Capital.

Significantly, every time the AAP has attacked the MCD over their inability to level the Ghazipur landfill site, the MCD officials have said that they have been waiting for another patch of land to shift some of the garbage from the main landfill site.

Moreover, Pathak also said that regular fires at the Ghazipur landfill site are creating a lot of health hazards for locals who live near the area — who are having to inhale toxic smoke on an almost daily basis. This has been a key bugbear of the AAP with the landfill sites and with Saturday's fire, AAP leader and MLA Atishi too took up

the issue.

She shared a picture of Saturday's fire and said on Twitter, "The garbage mountain of Ghazipur caught fire again. The people of Delhi are upset again. But the BJP-ruled MCD says they have no solution to this garbage mountain. Now MCD will be handled directly by Modi ji. Will now @PMOIndia solve this problem?"