Ghazipur fire stokes political flames

AAP says the BJP is setting up a new landfill site at Ghazipur; will make residents’ lives ‘a living hell’

A fire broke out at Ghazipur landfill on Saturday night and was doused within three hours. This is the second such incident to have been reported from the site in the past two weeks. On March 28, a fire that broke out here took over two days to be brought under control.

Commenting on the incident, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the “mountain of garbage” at the Ghazipur landfill was a result of the inefficiency and corruption in the BJP-ruled civic bodies. 

“Just when the people of Delhi had decided to give AAP a chance to run the civic bodies and fix the problem of garbage, the BJP got the elections postponed,” Mr. Sisodia added. 

The AAP said the BJP was working to make the lives of people in East Delhi “a living hell” by asking the Centre for land to establish a fresh landfill site at the Ghazipur Paper Mill, creating a new destination for Delhi’s waste.

Senior AAP Leader and municipalities in-charge Durgesh Pathak said, “It is deeply unfortunate that after giving Delhi three enormous and hazardous landfills in Ghazipur, Okhla, and Bhalswa, BJP wants to create a new landfill site. We staunchly oppose this proposal by the BJP and demand that it be withdrawn.”

Reacting to the statements made by the AAP leader, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said, “World’s top developed cities including Singapore, Newyork, London, Paris & Sydney, all have at least one or more landfill sites…Delhi needs to develop one or two more landfill sites where garbage is disposed of on a daily basis, without allowing fresh garbage mounds to come up.”

He added that while AAP leaders raised questions about the rising mounds of garbage at Ghazipur and Bhalswa landfill sites regularly, the Delhi government had not extended any help to mitigate the garbage dumped at these sites.