HC moves to clean Dwarka, asks civic body for waste guidelines

Hoping to clean and green the sprawling sub-city of Dwarka by streamlining waste collection, the Delhi High Court has directed the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) to draft guidelines and introduce concepts like colour coding.
The issue of waste segregation has to be addressed by civic agencies on a "priority basis", a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Pratibha M Singh said while passing the order last month.
It said the draft guidelines should be publicised well by putting it up on the corporation's website and by providing a copy to each society in the sub-city.
The guidelines are to be finalised only after due consultation with the societies, the bench said.

"Therefore, the SDMC shall draft simple guidelines highlighting the salient points such as three colour code collection process, the points of collection, days of collection for different types of wastes, the timings of collection.
"Preferably the collection should be done on a shift basis commencing at 4 am in the morning. The point of each collection would be made and the relevant timings etc. Should be clearly notified," it said.

The court also asked the SDMC and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to cooperate with each other in compiling the data necessary for the exercise.
Introducing the system of disincentives, it said the guidelines shall indicate clearly if a society or certain residents were not cooperating in waste segregation. They would then be "suitably dis-incentivized" and "garbage would not be collected from their apartments".

The court directed the authorities to file an action taken report in six weeks, indicating whether they have complied with its directions, including compiling log books of solid waste collected in the last three months from the 16 'dhalaos' in Dwarka.
"The logs or separate appropriate charts indicating the extent of garbage collected (in metric tonnes) on daily basis and transported to the site and further compiled into weekly and monthly charts, shall be prepared on the basis of such facts," it said.
The directions came on a PIL filed by law student and Dwarka resident Ebbani Aggarwal on the issue of lack of cleanliness and poor condition of roads as well as pavements in the sub-city, a relatively newer addition to the national capital housing high rise apartment blocks and several offices and hotels.

On the issue of pavements, the bench said there was nothing on record about any uniform standards with respect to the height and width of the pavements and the material used for constructing them.
It directed DDA to file an affidavit indicating total pavements (in kilometres) provided for in Dwarka and what actually exists as well as their state of repair and when they were last appraised.
The authority has to file its response within six weeks, the court said and listed the matter for further hearing on August 9.
The court had earlier said the failure of municipal corporations to provide an efficient garbage removal mechanism was one of the main reasons for lack of cleanliness in the national capital, especially in Dwarka.

In November last year, the court had asked senior officials of the police department, municipal corporation and DDA to show cause why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them for not cleaning up Dwarka despite judicial orders.