UT’s civic body takes over waste processing plant from Jaypee group

He added, “Even today when we had to take over, they moved the district court but we had already filed a caveat apprehending the same.”
Yadav said that the civic body took over the plant in the presence of police. “The MC will run the plant from tomorrow itself. No waste collection process or processing will be affected. Garbage collection and processing will go on as usual,” he said while talking about the future course of action.

On Thursday, the Commissioner had served a notice to the Jaypee plant informing about the same.

“Whereas the Hon’ble district court had passed the order dated March 12, 2020 that the operation of the impugned order of March 5, 2020 is stayed. However, this order remains in force for three months and during this period applicant shall take appropriate steps for appointment of the Arbitrator. At present, the interim stay granted by court was for period of three monthly only that is from March 12,2020 to June 12, 2020. Since the order passed under section 9 was for a definite period which has expired and there is no order of stay by any court of law. Now impugned order of March 5,2020 passed by Commissioner Municipal Corporation stands active. In light of the decision of General House taken on the basis of NGT order dated February 12, 2020 and the order dated March 12, 2020 of Hon’ble district court the implementation agreement dated December 30, 2005 stands terminated,” stated the order passed by the MC Commissioner.

What happened earlier

Early this year, the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation had decided to take over the waste processing plant that was being run by Jaypee Group in Dadumajra. The General House, in its meeting, decided that the Municipal Corporation will run the plant until a new company takes charge.

On February 12, during the hearing of the case before the National Green Tribunal, it was left to the MC to decide within a month whether it should continue operating with the Jaypee Group following which the House decided to terminate the agreement, but the company moved the court for a stay.

Contract with Jaypee

According to the agreement signed between the Jaypee Group and the MC, about 10 acres land was provided to the company for setting up the plant at a nominal lease rent of Rs 1 per square meter per annum for a period of 30 years. However, the company went into a legal battle later demanding tipping fee from the civic body, even as the MC contended that the agreement signed between them did not mention the payment of the tipping fee.

Meanwhile, the civic body argued that the company was not processing the city’s waste and most of it was going to the dumping ground which was an environmental concern.

The civic body has been in a legal battle with the garbage processing company for over four years now. Following an MoU signed between the parties in 2005 and 2008, Jaypee had set up a garbage processing plant at Dadumajra.

Following several letters sent by the company to the MC, threatening to shut the plant, the company suspended operations and shut down the plant on July 11, 2016. The civic body then moved the NGT requesting it to ask Jaypee to resume operations in public interest as the garbage was not being processed and had to be dumped at Dadumajra. The tribunal asked Jaypee Group to resume operations, following which the garbage processing unit was opened again on July 27 that year. But the legal battle didn’t end and things continued.

The NGT then asked the Municipal Corporation and Jaypee to amicably solve the issue. However, the MC again said that the plant was not processing waste completely.