MCDs eating up Delhi govt funds, not clearing landfills: Bharadwaj

New Delhi: The AAP on Monday upped the ante against the BJP-ruled civic bodies in the city, this time over the speed at which the MCDs were clearing the mounds of garbage in the Capital's three landfills at Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Okhla. Party leader Saurabh Bharadwaj held a press conference, where he alleged that the MCD authorities were purportedly misusing the funds sanctioned to them by the Delhi government to rent trommel machines to clear the garbage.

Bharadwaj alleged that the MCDs were wasting the Delhi government-sanctioned funds by renting trommel machines at higher rates and despite this, they were unable to meet the deadline of reducing the landfill heights — as set by the National Green Tribunal.

He said that the Delhi government's share for cleaning up the mounds amounts to Rs 125 crore for all three landfills whereas the MCDs' share came up to Rs 85 crore.

"Overall, the Delhi Government is paying much more than the Municipal Corporations to clear these landfills," Bharadwaj said, adding that the landfills were supposed to be reduced by 25 per cent by this year but "only 11 per cent of the waste has been reduced so far". At this speed, the mounds will take 100 years to be reduced to safety standards, he said.

The party said that the mounds were causing sever damage to the environment around it along with causing a loss of Rs 500 crore to the exchequer.

Bharadwaj also pointed to a Delhi Pollution Control Committee report, to note the slow speed of garbage clearing. Referring to the report, he cited the example of Bhalswa, where the DPCC said 19 lakh metric tonnes of waste had been dumped in the last two years but only 18.5 lakh metric tonnes were cleared in that time.The AAP leader alleged that corruption in the MCD administrations was the reason behind this.