Yet, for some unfathomable reasons, the Delhi government is pushing the Rs 200-crore Timarpur-Okhla waste-to-energy project that is coming up on a 15-acre Municipal Corporation of Delhi plot, a few hundred metres from south Delhi colonies like Sukhdev Vihar, Maharani Bagh and New Friends Colony, near three premier hospitals (Holy Family, Fortis-Escorts and Apollo Indraprastha) and an old age home.
It is being built on land that was seen as a green buffer between the residential areas and a biomedical waste plant set up years ago.
Like many other projects in India, this too began with a public hearing — an eyewash, really — in 2006 when the DMK's A Raja was the Union environment minister.
The Delhi government claims that it had given a newspaper notice for the public hearing (a legal requirement for projects of this size) on December 17, 2006, but no resident of the area attended the meeting. Residents, however, tell a different story. They allege that the public notice was drafted in a manner as to conceal the fact that 2,050 tonnes of municipal solid waste would be burnt everyday to generate 16 MW of electricity. Read the full report here.
Source: KumKum Dasgupta, Hindustan Times.
