Chandigarh fined 20,000 for not filing reply in Dadumajra garbage case, MC says will clear it by May 31

During the resumed hearing on Tuesday, a division bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sumeet Goel asked the municipal corporation to specify a timeline for clearing the dump. Advocate Gaurav Mohunta, appearing for the MC, submitted that three agencies were working on the site and that the remaining waste would be cleared by May 31. He said two older dumps had already been removed, the soil had been bioremediated, and an integrated solid waste management plant was coming up at the site.

Responding to a query from the bench, Mohunta assured the court that the proposed facility would be capable of handling the city’s entire waste output. “No fresh garbage is being dumped there,” he added. “All waste generated by the city—mixed, dry, wet, even horticultural—is being processed.”

The court passed the cost order against the UT administration after noting its continued failure to respond, despite directions issued in February.. When UT counsel Tanmoy Gupta argued that the administration was not a party to the specific application, Sharma countered that the UT had itself requested the matters to be clubbed in 2022. He referred to an order dated November 16, 2023, in which the administration submitted a document said to be a tender “about to be floated,” but never shared it with the petitioner. “They have been playing these games for the longest time, and they continue to mislead the court for six, seven years now. It’s like an SOP (standard operating procedure),” he told the bench.

The cost imposed by the court is to be deposited in the patients’ welfare fund at PGIMER.

Sharma also sought liberty to file a consolidated reply to both the MC and UT affidavits, alleging that the corporation’s reply contained false claims.

The matter will now be heard on July 23.

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