The garbage mountains of Delhi caught the attention of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, which asked both the Lieutenant-Governor and the Chief Minister to clarify by Wednesday as to who is responsible for clearing them.
“There are mountains of garbage in Delhi, particularly in Bhalswa, Okhla and Ghazipur. We would like to know who is responsible for clearing the garbage — those answerable to the L-G or those answerable to the Chief Minister?” a Bench of Justices M.B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta said.
Buried under waste
The Bench observed that Delhi is getting buried under mounds of garbage and Mumbai is sinking under water but the governments were doing nothing.
It also slapped fines on 10 States and two Union Territories for not filing affidavits on policies for solid waste management strategy.
“The Solid Waste Management Rules came into force on or about April 8, 2016. We are two years down the line but we are shocked to know that more than two-third of the States/UTs have not yet complied with the basic requirement of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016,” the Bench said.
“The tragedy is that more than two-third of the States / UTs in the country have neither bothered to comply with the orders passed by the court nor bothered to comply with the directions given by the MoEF, Government of India....This is not only a tragic state of affairs but a shocking state of affairs, particularly since solid waste management is a huge problem in this country,” noted the Bench.
