MCD to fire Ghazipur landfill operator

The east Delhi dump site, along with two other legacy landfill sites, was supposed to be cleared in a year following direction by the National Green Tribunal in 2019.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has decided to terminate the contract of the private operator responsible for clearing the Ghazipur landfill site, the city’s largest garbage dump, due to “non-performance” and “failure to meet deadlines”, senior officials aware of the matter said on Sunday.

According to the latest deadline, MCD plans to clear the Ghazipur landfill site by December 2028. (PTI)

The east Delhi dump site, along with two other legacy landfill sites, was supposed to be cleared in a year following direction by the National Green Tribunal in 2019. Despite several revised deadlines, around 16 million tonne of waste remains to be cleared from the three spots — almost half of it is at the Ghazipur site, according to the MCD officials.

“The contract for the Ghazipur landfill site (first phase) has been terminated due to non-performance of the contractor. Bids have been reinvited for second phase for clearing 3 million tonne of waste which is likely to be awarded by first week of February,” a senior MCD official said, asking not to be named.

The municipal authority had started the biomining project in 2019 at Okhla, Ghazipur and Bhalswa sites with a cumulative legacy waste of 24 million tonne after NGT in 2019 had directed that legacy waste dumps be “cleared within one year” and “substantial progress must be made and demonstrated within six months”.

However, there have been multiple revisions and extensions of these deadlines. According to the latest deadline, MCD plans to clear the Ghazipur landfill site by December 2028.

A December 17 order by MCD states: “...Pursuant to terms of contract agreement, agency consistently failed to meet the original targets and milestones, achieving only 36% of the required work during the original contract period with significant shortfalls in every quarter....despite agency’s request for extension of time to complete the work, which was granted up to April 10, 2025 without prejudice to MCD’s rights to recover the liquidated damage, agency has continued to fail in achieving the revised quarterly targets with huge shortfalls in last two quarters.”

The existing contractor at Ghazipur was awarded the biomining project in November 2022, another MCD official said. “They were expected to clear around 30 lakh tonnes of legacy waste in a period of 18 months. The contractual amount was ₹223.5 crore,” the official added.

The slow pace of work has also been witnessed at the other two sites in Okhla and Bhalswa. The first official cited above said that by October this year, 3 million tonne of waste has been cleared from the Okhla site under the first phase, while 4.5 million tonne was removed from Bhalswa. Work for the second phase has been awarded for both dumpsites for 2 million tonne.

“These second phase projects have provision by which they can be extended by another 10-15 lakh metric tonne each,” the official said.

The trommelling and biomining of mixed legacy waste leads to separation of various components like inert materials and construction waste-boulders, fractions of soil, organic matter, and combustibles, among other things. The mixed legacy waste is passed them through a trommel machines which act as cylindrical rotating sieves. A third senior MCD official explained that while the fractions vary, the trommelling leads to 60-70% of inert material and 10-15% of Refuse Derived Fuel combustibles. This fuel is produced from combustible components that the industry calls Municipal Solid Waste. The rest is considered to construction & demolition waste among other components.

The project to clear the three landfill sites remains mired with delays. On December 16, LG VK Saxena had inspected the progress at Okhla landfill site and expressed “grave disappointment” over the “static and, in many cases, falling rates of biomining” at Okhla and other landfill sites.

“The LG was informed that the work of biomining had stopped at Okhla as of now and was being carried out at the rate of 4,000-5,000 MT per day till November 28 when the work was finally stopped with tenders for a new concessionaire being finalised. It was also informed that the slowest pace was at Ghazipur,” WHICH official said.