Blame-game erupts after two lives lost

NEW DELHI: Calling the Ghazipur landfill accident a man-made disaster, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal blamed the municipal corporation for it. Kejriwal said the corporation paid no heed to the notices sent by Delhi Pollution Control Committee about the site being unfit for garbage disposal and the danger it posed.
But the mayor of East Delhi Municipal Corporation was reportedly seen on TV, citing lack of land as a problem and blaming the AAP-led Delhi government for not implementing the Delhi Fourth Finance Commission report.
Both Kejriwal and deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia rushed to the spot when the news about the accident broke. Area MLA Manoj Kumar was also present at the spot. After taking stock of the situation and the rescue operation that was on, Kejriwal told mediapersons, “A very big disaster has happened today. Landfill sites are a very bad and improper way of garbage disposal. All over the world, very advanced technology is available for garbage disposal.”
He added, “I have been told that DPPC had given the corporation many notices on garbage dumping at the landfill site and the fact that its height was much more than permissible. We will talk to the LG and together build pressure on the corporation to stop this kind of dumping at landfills and opt for advanced technology for solid waste management.”
Later, Kejriwal took to Twitter and repeated the same charge. He also tweeted out a DPCC letter dated November 8, 2016, to the east corporation in which it had been said that the site wasn’t fit.
This blame game had started soon after the accident had happened. EDMC mayor Neema Bhagat also visited the spot and blamed the Delhi government for the “poorly maintained” site. She said had the Delhi government provided financial aid to the cash-strapped corporation, EDMC would have taken up a project to reclaim the landfill site.
“We have initiated an inquiry into the incident and I have directed the senior officers to establish a culpability. We will also cooperate with the police in the investigations,” Bhagat said, adding that the incident probably occurred due to continuous rain in the last couple of days.
Bhagat then added, “EDMC has been continuously demanding a site from DDA to shift the load from Ghazipur landfill site. But till now, it has not been given to us.”
Some of these remarks were made on a TV channel. AAP Delhi’s chief spokesperson, MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj, countered her via Twitter that it’s the “BJP-ruled DDA which controls land”, not the Delhi government. Bhardwaj then went for a sharper line of attack by saying that DDA has no land for landfills, mohalla clinics, DTC depots, hospitals or schools but has land “for Vijay Goel and commercial malls only”.
The Twitter attack was soon joined in by Nagendra Sharma, media advisor to CM Kejriwal, who called it “criminal negligence”. He said three years ago, Delhi high court had directed DDA to provide land for alternative landfill sites to the corporations.