Reacting on the report of allotting 42.5 acre to East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) for setting-up a new landfill site near a densely populated Sonia Vihar and Gonda Gujran in North East Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Dilip Pandey on Wednesday criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Centre, saying that he will file a fresh application before National Green Tribunal (NGT) to challengethe move.
Pandey who is one of the petitioners in the ongoing case before the NGT said he will file a fresh application to and challenge the move of the BJP controlled Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and EDMC in which they quietly set-up a new landfill site on 42 acres at Gonda Gujran.
Pandey asked Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari to make his stand clear on the issue. Accusing BJP controlled Municipal Corporation; he said that it has no plan to manage solid waste. “This is a clear violation of Solid Waste Management Rules 2016. Nearby areas like Sonia Vihar, West Karawal Nagar, Sabhapur Village, Ankur Vihar etc, will be destroyed if this is allowed,” Pandey said.
He added this move also violates the order of the NGT dated March 9, 2016, in which the NGT had clearly directed the DDA that is cannot allot land for a landfill site without the Tribunal’s permission. “The BJP central government’s agencies are laying that National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) had cleared the setting-up of a landfill site at this spot. NEERI report is merely about the land status and nothing else,” he said.
Pandey cited a 1996 Supreme Court judgment in which it is said that a landfill sit cannot come up at the land allotted by the DDA, which ruled that any environmental degradation is enough to deny a landfill site.