On Thursday, March 16, Delhi CM and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal was greeted with a green carpet at the Bhalswa landfill site in the national capital. Kejriwal had apparently visited the site to inspect the bio-mining work being carried out to remove the garbage piled up at the site.
Sharing pictures of Kejriwal’s visit to the Bhalwa landfill site, BJP leader Manoj Tiwari took a dig at the AAP supremo by calling him ‘Raja Saheb’. The BJP leader tweeted in Hindi, “When he visits the garbage site, he walks on the green carpet because he is a king…AAP’s charades are limitless @ArvindKejriwal ji.”
लैंडफिल साइट का visit किया तो ग्रीन कारपेट लगाकर चले.. क्योंकि राजा हैं साहेब.. हद है AAP की @ArvindKejriwal जी pic.twitter.com/rYkwIeTUup
— Manoj Tiwari 🇮🇳 (@ManojTiwariMP) March 16, 2023
BJP leader Amit Malviya also shared the picture of Kejriwal walking on a green carpet specially laid out over the garbage mounds for the AAP supremo and used a dialogue from the Bollywood film to take a dig at him. He wrote, “Green carpet welcome at a landfill site for Arvind Kejriwal… Look at your shoes, they are special. Don’t put them on the ground, they will get dirty.”
Green carpet welcome at a landfill site for Arvind Kejriwal… आपके जूते देखे, ख़ास हैं। इन्हें ज़मीन पर मत उतारियेगा, मैले हो जाएँगे। pic.twitter.com/IdZG4SC3AT
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) March 16, 2023
Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kumar also expressed shock at the green carpet welcome accorded to the AAP chief during his visit to a garbage site. Sharing a similar picture, Kumar wrote, “Wow Maharaj… you were once a common man. Now, look at @ArvindKejriwal ji’s style – when he reached Bhalswa to inspect the landfill site, a #GreenCarpet was laid out for sir to walk – lest the shoes would have gotten dirty.”
वाह महाराज .. आप तो आम आदमी थे कभी@ArvindKejriwal जी के ठाठ देखिये – जब Bhalswa लैंडफिल साइट का निरिक्षण करने पहुंचे तो वहाँ साहब के चलने के लियें #GreenCarpet बिछाये गये – कहीं जूता मैला ना हो जाये@BJP4Delhi @Virend_Sachdeva@RamvirBidhuri @aajtak @TajinderBagga @ZeeDNHNews pic.twitter.com/sEnnTkKkUs
— Praveen Shankar Kapoor (@praveenskapoor) March 16, 2023
Meanwhile, after visiting the site, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said that the garbage mounds in northwest Delhi’s Bhalswa landfill will be cleared by March next year.
“Presently, the landfill held around 5 million tonnes of waste. Over the last two-and-a-half years, 3 million tonnes of waste was removed, but the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which is now under the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), will work at a faster pace. We are targeting the removal of another 3 million tonnes of waste by December this year,” Kejriwal said after inspecting the bio-mining work at the landfill.
Kejriwal added that while the initial target was to remove 6,500 tonnes of waste per day from Bhalswa, bio-mining work gathered pace and 9,000 tonnes of garbage was processed on Wednesday. “By March-end, around 12,000 tonnes of waste will be removed every day. With the speed at which the work is progressing, the area will be cleared of all garbage by March 2024,” he said.
Notably, Delhi alone generates 11,332 tonnes of Municipal Solid Waste every day and only treats 47.2% of it, mainly for energy. The remaining waste ends up in Delhi’s three landfills in Okhla, Ghazipur and Bhalaswa. This means that 5500+ tons of waste are added to landfills every day.
Interestingly, during Delhi’s municipal election, the removal of landfills was at the top of AAP’s political agenda. During a visit to ‘Okhla-landfill,’ then-Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia spoke passionately about his plans to eliminate these landfills from the city’s landscape. After winning the MCD elections, AAP’s biggest challenge now is to remove the mountain of garbage that has amassed in these three landfills, pushing the national capital to the brink of a massive environmental disaster.
