5 deadlines missed since 2020: Why Delhi’s landfill crisis continues
Delhi's municipal body has delayed the deadline for flattening the city's three major landfills for the fifth time since 2020. While bio-mining progress has exceeded targets at two sites, the continued dumping of fresh waste prevents the complete removal of the garbage mountains.
Why it matters
The persistent failure to manage urban waste highlights critical infrastructure and policy challenges in one of the world's most populous cities.
NEW DELHI: July has barely begun, and MCD, seemingly aware that it will again miss its own target, has replaced the July 31 deadline for flattening the Okhla landfill with a fresh one at Dec-end.The latest revision is the fifth since 2020.The civic body’s race to flatten Delhi’s three man-made garbage mountains has increasingly become a race against its own promises and the calendar. Every few months, a new deadline replaces the old one, and the towering landfills stay that way.For now, MCD has said that the Bhalswa and Ghazipur landfills will be flattened by Dec 2026 and Dec 2027, respectively. But given the volume of waste lying at these sites and the pace of work, those dates, too, risk becoming dated.
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