Delhi Waste-to-Energy Plant Faces Fierce Local Opposition in Bawana Industrial Area
“Saas lene maare tan pure ukhde. Khatte nu hatava re e sarkar chalane aade (Our bodies ache when we breathe. Those running the government, please remove the dump site),” Rajkumari sings in Haryanvi, alongside her friends, as the residents of Sanoth village in Bawana, North Delhi, continue their one-and-a-half-month-long protest against the proposed Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plant. Each morning, men and women gather under a makeshift tent, singing protest songs and demanding that the government scrap the project.
Residents from around 17 villages fear the new facility—planned on a 15-acre site in Bawana, an industrial hub with thousands of small-scale manufacturing units and a power generation plant—will pollute the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the very land they live on. Angered by the State and central government’s apathy, many locals call it “kachra rajneeti”: the politics of garbage, where election campaigns reach their doorsteps, but elected representatives never do.
With rapid urbanisation and population growth, municipal waste generation has significantly increased. Until recently, the most common method for municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal was landfills. However, overflowing landfills and the environmental hazards they pose have led to a shift towards WTE plants with Delhi’s first plant established in 2012.
Also Read | Understanding Kejriwal’s startling claims over Yamuna water crisis
Delhi currently has four functional WTE plants in Okhla, Tehkhand, Ghazipur, and Bawana. The city generates over 11,000 tonnes of solid waste per day, but its existing waste processing plants have a combined daily capacity of only 8,073 tonnes. The newly proposed 30 MW WTE project, designated to be set up near a hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facility in Sector 5, Bawana Industrial Area, is an initiative by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to handle an additional 3,000 tonnes of waste per day. The project, estimated to cost Rs.660 crore, is being implemented through a PPP with Jindal Urban Waste Management (Bawana) Ltd.
For Bawana residents, the fear surrounding this project is not unfounded. Sector 5 already houses a massive landfill, an operational WTE plant, and hazardous waste treatment facilities. Local people say they have suffered enough and will not allow another such project to create one more khatta (dumpsite) in their backyard. “The stench is unbearable. Our lives are miserable. We can’t even breathe,” says one protestor.
Many residents also draw comparisons to the Okhla WTE plant, operated by a subsidiary of the same company. An investigation by The New York Times in November 2024 revealed multiple environmental violations at the Okhla facility, raising serious concerns about its compliance with pollution norms. Jaikumar, a protestor who previously worked in a factory in Okhla, fears that Bawana will face the same fate as those in Okhla. “Just look at the condition of people living there; they are in a deplorable state. They can hardly breathe and suffer from skin infections,” he says. “It is a whole mountain [of garbage] here.”
The small circle depicts the JJ colony and the DDA flats within 100 mt of the proposed WTE plant. The bigger circle depicts Sanoth Village, within one km of the WTE site.
| Photo Credit:
Source: Google Maps
In 2017, the National Green Tribunal imposed a Rs.25 lakh fine on the Okhla WTE plant (operated by the Jindal Group that has proposed a facility in Bawana) for failing to meet standards. Similarly, in 2021, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) fined the Okhla, Ghazipur, and Narela-Bawana incinerators Rs.5 lakh each for non-compliance with prescribed environmental and pollution norms. Queries sent by Frontline to Jindal Group did not receive a response.
The people of Sanoth village, two km from the proposed plant site and barely one km from the landfill, already face the devastating health consequences of pollution from the nearby landfill, factories, and WTE plants. “Pregnant women suffer the most. We have to travel nearly 20 km to the city because there are no proper health facilities in Bawana,” says Umed Singh, a local protestor.
Dinesh Kumar, a medical practitioner who has worked in Bawana for 14 years, has seen the deterioration firsthand. “Before 2012, before the landfill was created, respiratory illnesses were rare. Now, cases of asthma and chronic cough have skyrocketed, especially among children and the elderly,” he says. “The village does not have adequate healthcare facilities. Patients travel 16 km to Ambedkar Hospital.”
Ghost town
The proposed site for the WTE plant is surrounded by pollution-heavy infrastructure. It sits adjacent to a hazardous waste treatment facility and borders the Munak Canal, which supplies drinking water from the Yamuna River from Haryana to Delhi. This water undergoes treatment at four facilities before being distributed across the city, raising concerns about potential contamination. An existing WTE plant of 24 MW, run by Ramky Enviro Engineers Ltd, lies barely 200 metres from the proposed site and has been processing around 4,000 tonnes of solid waste per day since 2017.
The site also shares a boundary with a JJ colony housing nearly four lakh residents. The towering garbage dump, created in 2012, is just 500 metres from the site and looms over the newly inaugurated Delhi Development Authority (DDA) housing complex with almost 10,000 flats, which is more a ghost town than a resettlement area. Spread over 184 acres, the complex was meant to provide affordable housing to low-income groups, but few live here due to its remoteness.
The environmental impact assessment conducted in September 2024 by Mantec Consultants, with Jindal Urban Management Bawana Ltd as its project proponent, included a “compilation of baseline environmental and social scenarios within a 10-kilometre radius around the project site, conducting field studies and using secondary data from authorised sources.” However, the report does not acknowledge the residential areas in immediate proximity to the site, including the JJ cluster, the DDA flats, Sanoth village, and other neighbouring villages.
Also Read | Delhi smog hits highest level this year
The report reveals deteriorating air quality in Sector 5, Bawana: average PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels increased almost threefold between 2019 and 2023. The EIA states: “owing to the fact that the towns/villages have above-average health, education, sanitation facilities and employment opportunities available in the study, the inhabitants have a good quality of life, and it is expected that the quality of life of the study area will further enhance after the upcoming project.” It adds that Jindal Urban Waste Management (Bawana) Ltd will contribute to the infrastructural and social development of the area under the provisions of corporate environmental responsibility. Frontline reached out to Mantec Consultants for clarification but did not receive a response.
Yashwant Kumar, president of the residents’ welfare association of the JJ colony, strongly disagrees. “This project will not only pollute our air but will also bring diseases. The registered medical practitioners in the area have also noticed a significant surge in people with respiratory ailments,” he says.
The site lies just 200 metres from the DDA flats, directly violating the Ministry of Urban Development’s guidelines, which mandate that “such plants be situated at least 300 to 500 mt away from residential areas,”
Just a formality
On December 27, 2024, the DPCC held a public meeting regarding the project’s environmental clearance. Despite heavy rains, thousands of locals gathered to voice their opposition to the plant, but they claim the meeting was poorly conducted and ineffective.
A DPCC report dated January 3 states: “They [the villagers] are against this project since there are already solid waste processing facilities operating in the vicinity of their villages.” Officials, including those from the revenue department and the DPCC, attended the meeting, along with representatives of the project proponent, Jindal Urban Waste Management (Bawana) Ltd.
Rajpal Saini, a resident of Sanoth village and a retired MCD officer, described the hearing as a “mere formality”. “The rain created a lot of confusion. Around 2,000 people came, but the public hearing was not successful. We were not able to voice our grievances. We even requested them to postpone the meeting, but the organisers had come just to complete formalities,” he said. Saini alleged that apart from residential areas, other significantly populated areas such as the CRPF camp and the Air Force station were also omitted from the environmental sensitivity report.
Frontline tried contacting the offices of the DPCC, District Magistrate, Sub-District Magistrate, and Additional District Magistrate to understand whether any further efforts would be made to accommodate the residents’ concerns, but no response was received.
Saini, who worked as a superintendent in the MCD’s sanitation department for 30 years, also raised concerns about how the plant would operate. “I know how these plants work. MCD is responsible for waste collection and disposal, but the waste is not even separated as mandated. By the time the waste reaches the plant, it has already started decomposing,” he explained. “These plants only comply with norms when an inspection is due. When I worked with the MCD, they would clean things up before I came for inspection. What they didn’t know was that I was a local and had seen how problematic their daily functioning was.”
Rajkumari (second from left) and other women of Sanoth village gather daily at the protest site, singing self-composed songs as a form of resistance against the WTE plant.
| Photo Credit:
Vitasta Kaul
Warrior Moms is a collective of mothers advocating for clean air in India. Bhavreen Kandhari, its founder, who attended the public hearing, criticised the authorities for failing to enforce Solid Waste Management Rules, which mandate waste segregation at the source. “Why is mixed waste still being collected? Why are they incinerating it instead of managing it properly?” she asked. Kandhari also pointed to severe staff shortage in agencies tasked with monitoring environmental compliance.
Land of the uprooted
Landfills worsen air pollution because of aerosol dispersal as well as the constant smouldering, which happens because the waste is always exploding with methane when there is a fire, said Bharati Chaturvedi, founder and director of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group. “Bawana is a resettlement colony. The authorities uprooted people from Delhi, deeming them illegal and unfit to remain in the city centre under the pretext of redeveloping their jhuggi settlements. They were forcibly displaced and abandoned in Bawana, a place devoid of basic facilities—children were unsafe, and transportation was very difficult. This forced isolation has not only deepened their social marginalisation but has also triggered a full-blown health crisis,” she added.
WTE plants do not fall under the purview of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP). GRAP, a set of stratified actions taken when pollution levels reach specified limits, was set up by the Environmental Pollution Control Authority following a Supreme Court order. Explaining the limitations of the GRAP, Chaturvedi said, “Ideally, a single GRAP should be sufficient to prevent air quality from deteriorating beyond a set threshold. If implemented at an AQI of 150 or 200, it should ensure pollution levels never exceed that mark. That would be the rational approach. Instead, this fragmented system of GRAP 1, GRAP 2, and GRAP 3 is ineffective, if not outright farcical.”
Compounding the issue, WTE plants remain exempt from GRAP regulations because solid waste management is classified as an essential service, allowing them to operate unchecked despite their emissions, she said.
The residents of Bawana remain resolute in their fight. “This protest will continue peacefully until we reach a solution,” says Rajpal Saini. “Agar yeh plant chalu ho gaya, toh hum court ke darwaze par jayenge, hum rukenge nahi. Hum apne liye aur apne aage wali peedi ke liye lad rahe hai” (If this plant starts, we’ll knock on the judiciary’s door. We won’t stop in this fight. We are fighting for ourselves and for future generations).
“Saas lene maare tan pure ukhde. Khatte nu hatava re e sarkar chalane aade (Our bodies ache when we breathe. Those running the government, please remove the dump site),” Rajkumari sings in Haryanvi, alongside her friends, as the residents of Sanoth village in Bawana, North Delhi, continue their one-and-a-half-month-long protest against the proposed Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plant. Each morning, men and women gather under a makeshift tent, singing protest songs and demanding that the government scrap the project.
Residents from around 17 villages fear the new facility—planned on a 15-acre site in Bawana, an industrial hub with thousands of small-scale manufacturing units and a power generation plant—will pollute the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the very land they live on. Angered by the State and central government’s apathy, many locals call it “kachra rajneeti”: the politics of garbage, where election campaigns reach their doorsteps, but elected representatives never do.
With rapid urbanisation and population growth, municipal waste generation has significantly increased. Until recently, the most common method for municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal was landfills. However, overflowing landfills and the environmental hazards they pose have led to a shift towards WTE plants with Delhi’s first plant established in 2012.
Also Read | Understanding Kejriwal’s startling claims over Yamuna water crisis
Delhi currently has four functional WTE plants in Okhla, Tehkhand, Ghazipur, and Bawana. The city generates over 11,000 tonnes of solid waste per day, but its existing waste processing plants have a combined daily capacity of only 8,073 tonnes. The newly proposed 30 MW WTE project, designated to be set up near a hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facility in Sector 5, Bawana Industrial Area, is an initiative by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to handle an additional 3,000 tonnes of waste per day. The project, estimated to cost Rs.660 crore, is being implemented through a PPP with Jindal Urban Waste Management (Bawana) Ltd.
For Bawana residents, the fear surrounding this project is not unfounded. Sector 5 already houses a massive landfill, an operational WTE plant, and hazardous waste treatment facilities. Local people say they have suffered enough and will not allow another such project to create one more khatta (dumpsite) in their backyard. “The stench is unbearable. Our lives are miserable. We can’t even breathe,” says one protestor.
Many residents also draw comparisons to the Okhla WTE plant, operated by a subsidiary of the same company. An investigation by The New York Times in November 2024 revealed multiple environmental violations at the Okhla facility, raising serious concerns about its compliance with pollution norms. Jaikumar, a protestor who previously worked in a factory in Okhla, fears that Bawana will face the same fate as those in Okhla. “Just look at the condition of people living there; they are in a deplorable state. They can hardly breathe and suffer from skin infections,” he says. “It is a whole mountain [of garbage] here.”
The small circle depicts the JJ colony and the DDA flats within 100 mt of the proposed WTE plant. The bigger circle depicts Sanoth Village, within one km of the WTE site.
| Photo Credit:
Source: Google Maps
In 2017, the National Green Tribunal imposed a Rs.25 lakh fine on the Okhla WTE plant (operated by the Jindal Group that has proposed a facility in Bawana) for failing to meet standards. Similarly, in 2021, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) fined the Okhla, Ghazipur, and Narela-Bawana incinerators Rs.5 lakh each for non-compliance with prescribed environmental and pollution norms. Queries sent by Frontline to Jindal Group did not receive a response.
The people of Sanoth village, two km from the proposed plant site and barely one km from the landfill, already face the devastating health consequences of pollution from the nearby landfill, factories, and WTE plants. “Pregnant women suffer the most. We have to travel nearly 20 km to the city because there are no proper health facilities in Bawana,” says Umed Singh, a local protestor.
Dinesh Kumar, a medical practitioner who has worked in Bawana for 14 years, has seen the deterioration firsthand. “Before 2012, before the landfill was created, respiratory illnesses were rare. Now, cases of asthma and chronic cough have skyrocketed, especially among children and the elderly,” he says. “The village does not have adequate healthcare facilities. Patients travel 16 km to Ambedkar Hospital.”
Ghost town
The proposed site for the WTE plant is surrounded by pollution-heavy infrastructure. It sits adjacent to a hazardous waste treatment facility and borders the Munak Canal, which supplies drinking water from the Yamuna River from Haryana to Delhi. This water undergoes treatment at four facilities before being distributed across the city, raising concerns about potential contamination. An existing WTE plant of 24 MW, run by Ramky Enviro Engineers Ltd, lies barely 200 metres from the proposed site and has been processing around 4,000 tonnes of solid waste per day since 2017.
The site also shares a boundary with a JJ colony housing nearly four lakh residents. The towering garbage dump, created in 2012, is just 500 metres from the site and looms over the newly inaugurated Delhi Development Authority (DDA) housing complex with almost 10,000 flats, which is more a ghost town than a resettlement area. Spread over 184 acres, the complex was meant to provide affordable housing to low-income groups, but few live here due to its remoteness.
The environmental impact assessment conducted in September 2024 by Mantec Consultants, with Jindal Urban Management Bawana Ltd as its project proponent, included a “compilation of baseline environmental and social scenarios within a 10-kilometre radius around the project site, conducting field studies and using secondary data from authorised sources.” However, the report does not acknowledge the residential areas in immediate proximity to the site, including the JJ cluster, the DDA flats, Sanoth village, and other neighbouring villages.
Also Read | Delhi smog hits highest level this year
The report reveals deteriorating air quality in Sector 5, Bawana: average PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels increased almost threefold between 2019 and 2023. The EIA states: “owing to the fact that the towns/villages have above-average health, education, sanitation facilities and employment opportunities available in the study, the inhabitants have a good quality of life, and it is expected that the quality of life of the study area will further enhance after the upcoming project.” It adds that Jindal Urban Waste Management (Bawana) Ltd will contribute to the infrastructural and social development of the area under the provisions of corporate environmental responsibility. Frontline reached out to Mantec Consultants for clarification but did not receive a response.
Yashwant Kumar, president of the residents’ welfare association of the JJ colony, strongly disagrees. “This project will not only pollute our air but will also bring diseases. The registered medical practitioners in the area have also noticed a significant surge in people with respiratory ailments,” he says.
The site lies just 200 metres from the DDA flats, directly violating the Ministry of Urban Development’s guidelines, which mandate that “such plants be situated at least 300 to 500 mt away from residential areas,”
Just a formality
On December 27, 2024, the DPCC held a public meeting regarding the project’s environmental clearance. Despite heavy rains, thousands of locals gathered to voice their opposition to the plant, but they claim the meeting was poorly conducted and ineffective.
A DPCC report dated January 3 states: “They [the villagers] are against this project since there are already solid waste processing facilities operating in the vicinity of their villages.” Officials, including those from the revenue department and the DPCC, attended the meeting, along with representatives of the project proponent, Jindal Urban Waste Management (Bawana) Ltd.
Rajpal Saini, a resident of Sanoth village and a retired MCD officer, described the hearing as a “mere formality”. “The rain created a lot of confusion. Around 2,000 people came, but the public hearing was not successful. We were not able to voice our grievances. We even requested them to postpone the meeting, but the organisers had come just to complete formalities,” he said. Saini alleged that apart from residential areas, other significantly populated areas such as the CRPF camp and the Air Force station were also omitted from the environmental sensitivity report.
Frontline tried contacting the offices of the DPCC, District Magistrate, Sub-District Magistrate, and Additional District Magistrate to understand whether any further efforts would be made to accommodate the residents’ concerns, but no response was received.
Saini, who worked as a superintendent in the MCD’s sanitation department for 30 years, also raised concerns about how the plant would operate. “I know how these plants work. MCD is responsible for waste collection and disposal, but the waste is not even separated as mandated. By the time the waste reaches the plant, it has already started decomposing,” he explained. “These plants only comply with norms when an inspection is due. When I worked with the MCD, they would clean things up before I came for inspection. What they didn’t know was that I was a local and had seen how problematic their daily functioning was.”
Rajkumari (second from left) and other women of Sanoth village gather daily at the protest site, singing self-composed songs as a form of resistance against the WTE plant.
| Photo Credit:
Vitasta Kaul
Warrior Moms is a collective of mothers advocating for clean air in India. Bhavreen Kandhari, its founder, who attended the public hearing, criticised the authorities for failing to enforce Solid Waste Management Rules, which mandate waste segregation at the source. “Why is mixed waste still being collected? Why are they incinerating it instead of managing it properly?” she asked. Kandhari also pointed to severe staff shortage in agencies tasked with monitoring environmental compliance.
Land of the uprooted
Landfills worsen air pollution because of aerosol dispersal as well as the constant smouldering, which happens because the waste is always exploding with methane when there is a fire, said Bharati Chaturvedi, founder and director of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group. “Bawana is a resettlement colony. The authorities uprooted people from Delhi, deeming them illegal and unfit to remain in the city centre under the pretext of redeveloping their jhuggi settlements. They were forcibly displaced and abandoned in Bawana, a place devoid of basic facilities—children were unsafe, and transportation was very difficult. This forced isolation has not only deepened their social marginalisation but has also triggered a full-blown health crisis,” she added.
WTE plants do not fall under the purview of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP). GRAP, a set of stratified actions taken when pollution levels reach specified limits, was set up by the Environmental Pollution Control Authority following a Supreme Court order. Explaining the limitations of the GRAP, Chaturvedi said, “Ideally, a single GRAP should be sufficient to prevent air quality from deteriorating beyond a set threshold. If implemented at an AQI of 150 or 200, it should ensure pollution levels never exceed that mark. That would be the rational approach. Instead, this fragmented system of GRAP 1, GRAP 2, and GRAP 3 is ineffective, if not outright farcical.”
Compounding the issue, WTE plants remain exempt from GRAP regulations because solid waste management is classified as an essential service, allowing them to operate unchecked despite their emissions, she said.
The residents of Bawana remain resolute in their fight. “This protest will continue peacefully until we reach a solution,” says Rajpal Saini. “Agar yeh plant chalu ho gaya, toh hum court ke darwaze par jayenge, hum rukenge nahi. Hum apne liye aur apne aage wali peedi ke liye lad rahe hai” (If this plant starts, we’ll knock on the judiciary’s door. We won’t stop in this fight. We are fighting for ourselves and for future generations).
