Even as the Chandigarh administration faces judicial heat over missed deadlines to clear the Dadumajra landfill, municipal corporation commissioner Amit Kumar on Sunday pulled up officials for delays, warning of “fixed accountability” if timelines are breached again.
During an inspection of the legacy waste site at Dadumajra dumping ground, the commissioner expressed strong displeasure over the pace of bio-mining and waste processing, particularly flagging the performance of the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Cell.
Accompanied by chief engineer Sanjay Arora and other senior officers, Kumar directed officials to strictly adhere to the revised deadline and accelerate operations with adequate manpower and machinery. He made it clear that any further delay in clearing the waste would not be tolerated.
The warning comes against the backdrop of shifting timelines placed before the Punjab and Haryana high court. The UT administration, which had earlier assured the court that the remaining waste would be cleared within 10 days, has now pushed the deadline to the first week of May, citing unseasonal rains.
Appearing before the bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sanjiv Berry, UT’s senior standing counsel Amit Jhanji submitted that only legacy waste remains at the site and no fresh dumping is taking place. However, the shifting deadlines have drawn sharp scrutiny, with the matter pending since 2016.
The commissioner, during his visit, stressed that the landfill continues to pose a serious environmental and public health risk, especially for residents living nearby. He directed strict compliance with National Green Tribunal norms, including scientific waste processing, segregation, leachate management and dust control.
Decades of delay, ₹110 crore spent
The Dadumajra crisis reflects years of mismanagement. Chandigarh has dealt with three “mountains” of legacy waste. The first (5 lakh metric tonnes) was cleared in 2022 at a cost of ₹33 crore. The second (8 lakh MT), under a ₹68-crore project, missed five deadlines before completion in February 2025. A third heap of 2.4 lakh MT emerged due to continued dumping and is now expected to be cleared by May at an additional cost of ₹12 crore
In total, over ₹110 crore has been spent, yet the landfill continues to impact the city’s sanitation profile and has contributed to a dip in its Swachh rankings.
During the latest hearing, petitioner advocate Amit Sharma criticised the civic body’s repeated delays, telling the court that “for the last 10 hearings, it has been some point or the other… and the dump continues to be there.”
The court also took note of allegations of forged or altered documents being submitted by the corporation, with Chief Justice Nagu observing that such claims are “serious in nature” and require adjudication.
