Relentless rain, unbreathable air, hours of delay, and the many u-turns of government officials. On a cold December afternoon, residents of Bawana, a town in North West Delhi, braved it all to put up a firm opposition against the proposed setting up of a waste-to-energy plant in their town.
“We will not allow our place to become a dumping yard,” yelled a resident as the public hearing organised by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee kicked off on Friday after a two-hour delay.
“We will never ever allow this plant here," screamed another.
Since that morning, hundreds of residents of Bawana had gathered near Sector 5’s TSD Facility for Hazardous Waste. They had one objective – to collectively push back against a proposal to set up a WTE plant that would be run by Jindal Urban Waste Management (Bawana) Limited. While the project has been floated by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the public hearing was conducted by the DPCC.
Bawana is a bustling industrial hub hosting thousands of small-scale manufacturing units and even a power generation plant. The proposed facility would be spread over 15 acres and would process 3,000 tonnes of waste daily to generate electricity. It will be one of three such facilities run by the BC Jindal group.
Importantly, the group was recently in the news after an investigation by The New York Times claimed that a waste-to-energy plant, run by one of the group’s subsidiaries, in Okhla violated several norms exposing residents in surrounding areas to harmful toxins known to cause severe health issues.
“We all know about the plant in Okhla and the group’s poor track record in pollution mitigation. Even a petition has been filed in the courts against their Okhla plant,” lawyer and local resident Deepak Atwal told Newslaundry. “Bawana residents are primarily concerned about the pollution from these kinds of WTE plants.”
At the public hearing, Bawana residents said the town is already plagued by high levels of pollution and a new WTE plant will only exacerbate their problems.
“Our area lacks basic facilities and our lives have been made hell due to industrial pollution. We already have one WTE plant here because of which we struggle to breathe during monsoons and winters,” said Ramniwas Sarawat, referring to a plant set up in 2014-15 in Bawana by Delhi MSW Solutions Limited. “The pollution has exposed our children and the elderly to several health risks.”
“There is already one such plant here. Why do they want to set up another? Don’t we have the right to breathe?” said Rajpal Saini, a resident of Sinoth village, which is just a kilometre away from the proposed site of the plant.
“We don't want a new plant because the existing plant itself does not follow any protocol. The plant’s vehicles still transport all the waste without covering it,” said Sarawat. “Add to this another plant and our lives will be completely destroyed. The benefits of such plants are very limited compared to the price villagers like us pay in return.”
Shifting venues, unsatisfactory answers
While the public hearing was intended to address concerns, residents told Newslaundry they were harassed by the presiding government officials.
The hearing was supposed to take place at 11 am near the TSD Facility in Sector 5. Since it was raining heavily in Delhi, the district administration shifted the venue to Prakash Garden in Sanoth village. Residents walked around two kilometres to the new venue but the event never began. There was also no sign of representatives from the DPCC and the Jindal group.
At 1.30 pm, Ankur Meshram, the additional district magistrate for Outer Delhi, arrived at Prakash Garden and told the attendees they’d have to return to the original venue. He said the original location had been made official through a public notice and couldn’t be shifted. Newslaundry was present during this announcement.
Even as the attendees protested, the ADM asked some village heads in attendance to head to the original spot and inform the DPCC officials that the public hearing should be postponed due to poor weather conditions. The village leaders refused, attendees continued to protest, and the district administration agreed to return to the original plan – to hold the public hearing at Sector 5.
So the group, this reporter included, set off again in the rain to walk back to the venue adjoining the TSD Facility, which was now sodden and wet.
Kunal Narwal, a lawyer and resident of Sonath village, said this was “harassment, nothing else”.
“The public hearing was supposed to start at 11 am. The villagers had started gathering at the spot since 9 am. The officials arrived at 10.30 am. The weather was not good so we told the officials that it won't be possible for everyone to come to that spot. When both sides agreed to go to a new site, the venue was again changed to the old spot,” he said.
Narwal also alleged that the proposed plant’s Environmental Impact Assessment report did not account for some villages and JJ housing clusters located near the proposed plant. Newslaundry was unable to check if this is the case.
“Our village is so close to the plant but it found no mention in the EIA,” Narwal said. “There are four schools in our village but they were not even mentioned in the report.”
A resident asked this very question during the public hearing. “Why does the proposal not even show the JJ clusters near the plant?” she asked the group of officials – DPCC, district administration, Jindal group – sitting on a makeshift stage. Another called out, “Which government allowed this plant to be set up? Centre or state?”
Dodging the question, Mesharam asked the villagers to “be calm and settle down”.
Later in the hearing, a Jindal employee said the plant was “in line with the central government’s Swachh Bharat Mission” and would help locals “mitigate” risks of the mounting garbage crisis. Unimpressed, village leader Surendra Solanki asked to see the document the employee was reading from, and then shredded it into pieces.
Addressing the Jindal employee, Solanki said, “You have said what you wanted to say, now we only want to say one thing: We don’t want it.” Another resident added: “Do you only find our villages only to dump the garbage from the city?”
None of the officials at the hearing, including from Jindal, agreed to speak to Newslaundry. An official from the DPCC merely said, “Our job is that of a messenger. We heard what people had to say. Now we will convey this to higher authorities.”
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