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UT Deputy Commissioner R K Rao has been asked to submit a report within 15 days.
Owing to the ongoing controversies regarding the Solid Waste Management Plant, General Rodrigues called Home Secretary Ram Niwas to Punjab Raj Bhawan on Friday morning and instructed him to immediately issue orders for initiating a probe into the plant.
The orders were issued around noon with Niwas instructing Municipal Commissioner Roshan Sunkaria to hand over all the relevant documents, proceedings and files pertaining to the plant to the inquiry officer.
Confirming the development, Home Secretary Ram Niwas said, “As desired by the UT Administrator, I have ordered the inquiry. The facts will come to light once the report is submitted”.
The Solid Waste Management Plant has been mired in controversy ever since it was inaugurated in May last year. It began with the Congress councillors boycotting the inauguration as the then Mayor Pardeep Chhabra’s name was not included in the invitation card. This led to heated arguments in the MC House with Congress councillors alleging that the Commissioner, along with the UT Administrator, had deliberately deleted the Mayor’s name.
Chhabra along with other councillors and officials inspected the plant and a committee, headed by councillor Chandermukhi Sharma, was constituted to prepare a report.
The committee then issued a show cause notice to J P Associates for the various discrepancies found at the site. The notice period, which was to end on December 28, was later extended till March.
The management promised that 150 tons of garbage per day would be processed till the second week of January 2009. This would be increased gradually to 200 tons per day between January 16 and February 7; 250 tons per day from February 8 to February 28 and 330 tons per day from March 1 to March 31. From March 31 onwards, the plant was expected to take up full load.
Interestingly, when Mayor Kamlesh inspected the plant recently, she also found several anomalies in its functioning following which she marked another enquiry in the matter.
The ‘unique’ waste management plant
Set up at a cost of Rs 30 crore on a 10-acre plot of land priced at Re 1 per square yard, the plant was conceptualised to be one-of-its-kinds in northern India. The aim was to dispose of all the garbage in the city in an environment-friendly manner. The foundation stone of the project was laid by the UT Administrator in February 2006. The facility was also to be used for processing leaves of plants and trees to create energy pellets.
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