NEW DELHI: It wasn’t just a fire that broke out at the Ghazipur landfill on Sunday evening; a political blame game too has been ignited, especially with the civic body polls around the corner.
A massive fire broke out on Sunday evening at the Ghazipur landfill site in east Delhi, prompting a major fire operation with a dozen fire tenders on the scene. According to environment experts, the Ghazipur landfill is among the largest emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes atmospheric heating.
The Delhi BJP, out of power in the Municipal Corporation Department (MCD), was quick to fire brickbats at the AAP dispensation at the helm of the civic body for not delivering its promise of clearing the landfill.
“Arvind Kejriwal had promised to clean up this landfill site by December 31, 2023, before the 2022 elections of the MCD, but today, instead of removing old heaps from the landfill site, a new heap has been formed there,” Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said.
He said it is shameful that due to the corrupt negligence of the AAP-led MCD, a fire broke out at the Ghazipur landfill site, causing the entire area to be filled with odour and smoke, causing significant inconvenience to residents and businesses in the area. “It is regrettable that today Kejriwal is in jail, but Delhi’s environment minister Gopal Rai and Mayor Shelley Oberoi did not consider it necessary to visit the site,” the BJP leader said.
Meanwhile, MCD deputy mayor Aaley Muhammad Iqbal said, “I personally inspected the site and gave instructions to the officials to control the fire in the earliest. Five excavators and several fire engines are present to control the fire which seems to have broken out due to the extremely hot and dry weather conditions.”
The city cumulatively generates around 11,400 metric tonnes of garbage, out of which nearly 6,200 metric tonnes is dumped at three landfills, ie, Ghazipur, Okhla and Bhalswa, civic officials had said. Clearing the three landfills was among the electoral promises of the AAP during the 2019 state assembly elections.