Facing the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s scrutiny, the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation has pressed 518 employees from various departments into service to clean the Dadumajra dumping ground.
As per official records, the additional deployment includes 200 employees from the Horticulture Wing, 70 from the Public Health Wing, 143 from the Road Wing and 105 from the Medical Officer Health Wing. These teams will act as supervisory staff for the clean-up.
Leading from the front, MC Commissioner Amit Kumar and Chief Engineer Sanjay Arora joined employees on Wednesday to collect non-biodegradable waste at the Sector 25 site.
The move comes after HC directions during the last hearing, where the court sought a detailed status report and made it clear that the corporation must demonstrate genuine cleaning on ground. “Mere paperwork will not suffice,” the court had observed.
To comply, the MC has ordered deployment of all available supervisory staff up to SDE level, along with machinery, equipment, gunny bags, tractor trolleys, JCB machines, and maximum available labour. MC officials, however, claim the main garbage dump has already been removed. The additional staff, they say, has been brought in to clear plastic, clothes, and other material left behind after the garbage removal. These employees are in addition to workers already engaged by agencies handling waste processing.
The Municipal Corporation first fixed the deadline of May 31, 2025, for clearing the mountain of garbage then it claimed that the garbage would be cleared by July 31, 2025. In September 2025, the Municipal Corporation in reply to the notice of the Chandigarh Pollution Control Committee (CPCC) said that the remaining quantity of 60,000 MT will be remediated by November 30, 2025.
Dayal Krishan, a local resident and president of the Dumping Ground Joint Action Committee, alleged the MC has not removed the garbage completely. “The garbage of the third dump has just been flattened in the area up to the height of the wall surrounding the dumping ground,” he said.
