INTERVIEW | ‘Lack of standing committee delaying landfill clean-up’: Delhi Deputy Mayor
With assembly elections fast approaching, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has begun a major drive to address long-pending civic concerns, including cleanliness, landfill sites and the condition of corporation-run schools and hospitals.
Newly elected Deputy Mayor Ravinder Bharadwaj talks to Prabhat Shukla about these issues and the difficulties of running the MCD without a functioning standing committee.
What is your agenda for your term as Deputy Mayor? What are your main priorities, and how do you plan on fulfilling them?
The cleanliness of Delhi is our main agenda. We want to make Delhi a clean and beautiful city. To achieve this, both the Mayor and I are making rounds of all the zones and wards. We want to see the kind of service the corporation is providing on the ground when it comes to cleanliness.
Even the officers of the corporation have picked up the pace. Right now, the main roads in Delhi are littered with garbage, but ever since we started hitting the ground, things have started to improve.
How do official visits help in the clean-up drive, and what is the timeline for its completion?
When we hit the ground, we take municipal officials along with us. This creates a sense of urgency among them. Consequently, they are working on removing most of the Garbage Vulnerable Points (GVPs), areas where garbage is dumped openly on the sides of the roads.
We want to ensure that when an outsider visits Delhi, they find an agreeable environment. We are visiting these areas ward by ward and are trying our best to visit all 250 wards in the city in the next three months.
Despite many promises to clean up the three major landfill sites in the city, not much progress has been made in this regard. What is the reason behind this?
The main reason behind this delay is issues with procuring trommel machines. This is because we don’t have a functioning standing committee. The funds required to increase the number of these machines are quite substantial and can only be passed by the standing committee.
However, we recently held a meeting with the Municipal Commissioner and the Additional Municipal Commissioner, and a solution will soon be found to fast-track the process.
The absence of a standing committee will surely lead to a lot more procedural delays. How do you plan on tackling these?
Any project of the corporation that costs more than Rs. 5 crores has to be approved by the standing committee. Without the committee, we are facing a lot of financial issues. The political shenanigans of the Bharatiya Janata Party are to blame for this.
However, we have approached the court regarding this matter, and the case is still pending. We’ll have to wait and see what the outcome is. Until then, we are trying our best to ensure that all services of the corporation reach the residents of Delhi.
If the BJP manages to get one of its councillors elected as the Chairman of the committee, wouldn’t that lead to perpetual gridlock in the corporation?
They don’t have a majority in the committee. The Supreme Court has declared the last election invalid. We have more members. The people of Delhi have shown their faith in the Aam Aadmi Party. The BJP is just trying to have their way. The Supreme Court will do justice.
Do you hope for fresh elections to be held for the standing committee?
Yes, the elections should be conducted in a proper manner with all councillors in attendance. How can just one party get its member elected without the presence of other parties? What was the need to even conduct elections? They could have simply handed over the certificates.
A lot of the MCD hospitals are quite old and in dilapidated condition. How are you planning on improving their condition?
We have instructed officials to compile a list of all such hospitals in poor condition, when they were constructed, and what improvements need to be made. As soon as that report is complete, we will take action.
With assembly elections fast approaching, what preparations has your party made at the MCD level? What is the progress of MLALAD projects under MCD control?
We are properly monitoring the spending of all MLALAD funds under our control. We conduct two meetings with officials on a weekly basis to track the progress of all such projects and whether tenders have been issued. We have instructed officials to ensure the execution of all projects by December 15.