Half of city lives in slums and illegal colonies: MCD

In what comes as a dampener to the civic bodys sustained campaign to present a beautiful face of Delhi during the Commonwealth Games,the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Tuesday revealed a filthy side of the national capital before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Nearly half of 15 million Delhiites live in slums,JJ clusters and unauthorized colonies which have little or no garbage collection system,it said.

About 49% of the total population of Delhi lives in slum areas,unauthorized colonies and about 860 JJ clusters.There are also 20,000 jhuggies and according to a rough estimate about five persons stay in each jhuggi besides a sizable population living in unplanned areas having no proper system of collection,transportation and disposal of municipal solid wastes, said the affidavit filed through advocate Sanjiv Sen.

What is more startling is that despite formulation of the Master Plan 2021,the government has not been able to bring most of the residential areas under its purview.The MCD said: As a rough estimate only about 5% of the population lives in planned areas.

This means nearly 73.5 lakh people of the 1.5 crore population live in slums and unauthorized colonies and that only 7.5 lakh Delhiites enjoy civic amenities to the fullest being residents of planned development areas.This affidavit was filed by the civic body to highlight the urgent need for an alternative sanitary landfill (SLF) site as the one next to the Ghazipur slaughterhouse was more than full and unable to take any more load.

It said that MPD-2021 has estimated that Delhi would require an SLF site of the size of 1,500 acres. However,the size of the present three sites being used by MCD at Ghazipur,Bhalswa and Okhla together is less than 150 acres.Thus,MCD is operating from less than 10% of the estimated land required, the civic body said.

It blamed the piling up of filth and its non-collection on the uninterested approach of the Sheila Dikshit government and the Delhi Development Authority. The DDA and Delhi government have not yet been able to provide more suitable land in spite of repeated representations from MCD.The MCD is keen to stop operation from all the present three sites,including Ghazipur as soon as DDA and Delhi government allots it more land for SLF sites, it said.

Seeking the apex courts nod for using the abandoned Bhatti mines area as a SLF site,MCD said it was finding it extremely difficult to dispose 7,500 tonnes of municipal solid waste generated in Delhi.

The three SLF sites were almost saturated and it was becoming increasingly difficult to operate these sites due to height and slope constraints. MCD,however,is compelled to operate these sites at risk of loss of property and life due to non-availability of land for a new site, it said.