CHANDIGARH: The Haryana government has devised a technology-driven waste management system for high-footfall religious and pilgrimage sites, fairs and festivals, with IoT-enabled bins, waste audits and geo-tagging of littering hotspots.
The system will initially be implemented at Shri Mata Sheetla Devi Mandir in Gurugram, Brahma Sarovar in Thanesar, Kurukshetra, and Shri Mansa Devi Mandir in Panchkula.
The government will prepare site-specific solid waste management models with four-stream segregation and IoT-enabled bins fitted with sensors to provide real-time data on fill levels and automatically open their lids.
Each site will be divided into precincts, with no open collection points within a 500-metre buffer zone covering approach roads, vendor areas, parking spaces and waste transit routes to processing facilities. Four bins will be placed every 50 metres along the routes and every 25 metres in queue corridors.
Four-stream waste stations with covered storage will be set up at fixed points. Dedicated vehicles and litter-picking teams will be deployed at each site during peak periods. Floral waste will not be allowed to be immersed, sources said.
Bhandaras, prasad and flower shops, dharamshalas, hotels and dhabas within the 500-metre buffer zone will be registered as bulk waste generators with the Central Pollution Control Board.
A gap analysis will be conducted at each site against the requirements of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026, covering sweeping manpower and equipment for twice-daily sweeping, four-stream segregation infrastructure, and waste collection and transportation.
The concerned urban local bodies will assess each site based on its significance, annual and peak-season footfall, peak-day footfall and a minimum seven-day waste audit. The database will be maintained at the state urban local body and district levels, consolidated at the directorate and updated after every assessment.
The State Urban Local Bodies Department has prepared the blueprint in compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions in Bhopal Municipal Corporation versus Dr Subhash C Pandey and others on May 5. Para 10 of the order directed chief secretaries to identify tourist places and pilgrimage centres and establish a dedicated mechanism to implement waste management rules.
Meanwhile, the Haryana government signed an MoU on August 30 to set up an integrated waste-to-energy plant in Gurugram that will process 2,000 tonnes of waste daily and generate at least 20 MW of energy.
The Gurugram facility will be the largest of four plants planned for the Gurugram, Faridabad, Hisar and Ambala clusters. Together, the plants will process 5,000 tonnes of waste daily and generate 50 MW of energy, with all four expected to become operational by October 2028.
The plants will be established by Oil Green Energy Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Oil India Limited. The Faridabad plant will process 1,600 tonnes of waste daily and generate at least 16 MW. The Hisar cluster, covering Hisar, Hansi, Fatehabad and Jind, will process 500 tonnes daily and generate at least 5 MW. The Ambala cluster, covering urban local bodies in Ambala, Yamunanagar and Panchkula districts, will process 900 tonnes daily and generate at least 9 MW.
The projects will receive assistance under the Centre’s Urban Challenge Fund. The Centre will bear 25% of the capital cost, another 25% will be shared by the state government and urban local bodies, while Oil Green Energy Limited will invest the remaining 50%.