313 acres of land given to municipal corporations: DDA to NGT

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) today told the National Green Tribunal that 313 acres of land has been given to the municipal corporations to be used for waste management.

The DDA told a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar that it was for the municipal corporations to give utilisation certificates for the given land and apprise the NGT how it was being used and for what purpose.

The submission was made in response to a query from the bench about the total land given by DDA to the three municpal corporations in the city for setting up of the waste-to-energy plants and landfill sites.
 

Advocate Kush Sharma, appearing for DDA, told the tribunal that most of the landfill sites were operating without any environment clearance which was causing a great health hazard.

He said there was paucity of land with the authority and the DDA had lost thousands of crores worth of land due to Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act

During the proceedings, DDA submitted a map of the land falling on the floodplains of the river Yamuna and said the NGT had prohibited construction in areas demarcated as zone 'O' (river and water-body area).

The bench directed the municipal corporations to clearly state how much land has been given to each of them and the mechanism adopted for managing the waste.

The NGT had earlier directed the Delhi chief secretary to convene a meeting of stakeholders to ensure that the landfill sites in the city do not catch fire and add to pollution.

It had asked the chief secretary to visit the landfill sites and come up with constructive measures so that they do not catch fire in future. The order had come after a major fire broke out at the Ghazipur landfill site on October 14 which took 7 hours to be extinguished.

The tribunal had earlier rapped the Delhi government and the civic bodies over their "blame game" and shifting the responsibility for reduction and recycling of the municipal solid waste which led to the recent Ghazipur landfill collapse.