‘Superman’ LG

The court started monitoring the garbage disposal system across the country in 2015 after it took cognisance of the dengue death of a seven-year-old boy in Delhi. “Why should the corporations be asked? You are the LG. You should have found out by now,” the bench told Anand.

“Tell us how many times he (LG) has issued directions to the civic agencies,” the bench said, terming as “utopian” the ‘state policy on solid waste management strategy’ framed by the LG’S office. “It’s impossible to implement as the corporations do not have the funds.”

“There have been 25 meetings (in the last two years) but there has been no outcome. Delhi is still under a mountain of dumps,” the judges said. Anand attempted to defend the LG by placing a status report on what the corporations had done thus far, only to draw more ire from the judges.

“This is completely vague. Tell us the timeline. Within how much time will you clear the garbage? Do not give us jargon. Tell us in plain, simple English as to how much time will be taken,” Justice Lokur said.

The court gave the LG time till July 16 to file an affidavit indicating the time frame of the steps that would be taken to deal with the situation. The commissioner of the Gurugram municipal corporation was asked to be present in court on that day after the bench was informed that the city had made significant progress in tackling garbage.

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation informed the bench that it had succeeded in reducing the garbage pile in Okhla by at least 10 metres. It took six months to achieve the target. The court felt a lot more needed to be done because the gap between garbage collection and disposal was huge. NEWDELHI: Even as lieutenant governor Anil Baijal has been asking the municipal corporations to augment parking spaces by building multilevel facilities, the cash-strapped North Delhi Municipal Corporation has dropped the idea of constructing one due to paucity of funds.

On Wednesday, the North corporation standing committee chairperson Veena Virmani put on hold the project for construct- ing a stack parking lot opposite LNJP Hospital, saying such projects are too expensive to implement. “The unit will cost us Rs 10 crore and will have space for 90 cars. We are not in a position to incur so much expenditure on just one project,” said Virmani.

She also directed North corporation officials to demarcate or realign the parking space at surface parking lots so as to adjust more vehicles.