NEW DELHI: Nearly 90% of the legacy waste accumulated at the national capital’s Bhalswa landfill has been cleared, an official said on Thursday. This came as Delhi Mayor Pravesh Wahi and Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) Commissioner Sanjeev Khirwar reached the site to review ongoing bio-mining and waste disposal operations.
Speaking on the occasion, Wahi said, “One crore and two lakh metric tonnes (MT) of legacy waste have already been cleared from the Bhalswa landfill site and the remaining 23 to 25 lakh MT will be disposed of within the stipulated time frame.” He added,
“A contract has been awarded to a new agency for waste disposal at the Bhalswa site, and officials have been instructed to accelerate the pace of the waste disposal process.” Wahi added that the progress report on the waste disposal work will be reviewed on a daily basis.
Wahi mentioned that the process of disposal of fresh waste will also be accelerated. “The number of machines deployed for waste disposal will be increased and a state-of-the-art machine named ‘Vajra’ is being installed for this purpose,” he stated, assuring the public that the mountain of waste at the landfill would be completely cleared soon.
This comes just a few weeks after the MCD extended the deadline for clearing the waste at the site for the sixth time. Officials had attributed the reason for the extension to the change of the agency working in the clearance operations as the contract of the previous agency had expired.
The civic body’s Department of Environmental Management Services (DEMS) chairman, Sandeep Kapoor, said, “The deadline, earlier set for December 2026, had been extended by two months following a change in concessionaire and the replacement of old machinery. To expedite the process, the civic body has installed a new machine, Vajra 300, which has increased the waste-processing speed threefold.”
He further clarified that the larger estimates of 18–25 lakh MT of waste left at the site include material beyond the original legacy mound
Continuous dumping of waste impedes operations
Between 2020 and 2021, clearance operations at the landfill began with a legacy waste mound of approximately 70 to 75 lakh metric tonnes. However, continuous dumping of fresh waste every year pushed the total volume past one crore metric tonnes, according to officials
