Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)'s Standing Committee has cleared two proposals for generating power by utilising solid waste, irrespective of the Delhi High Court directive to Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) probe the Timarpur waste to energy scam and its outcome, the waste to energy plant, technically known as the refuse-derived fuel (RDF) power generation plant in Delhi.

Timarpur plant is in the news again for the wrong reasons.

The Court had directed the CAG to conduct an inquiry into the failure of the plant, which was imported from Danish firm Volund Milijotecknik in the mid-1980s. The plant, worth Rs 22 crore, was set up to generate power out of municipal solid waste. But it failed to function well and was eventually closed down in 1990.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed and in April 2001, the court directed the department of science and technology (DST) to conduct an independent inquiry and to name those responsible for the plant’s failure. The then Joint Secretary of DST, who carried out the inquiry, failed to do so and instead blamed the inability to follow ‘organisational systems and processes’ as the reason for the breakdown of the plant.

The court did not buy that argument and Chief Justice S B Sinha and Justice A K Sikri had declared, “ An inquiry could not have been wound up by throwing the entire blame on the system.”

“No order should have been placed for procurement of the plant unless its utilities were completely known.”

Now without waiting for the outcome of CAG's probe, MCD's Standing Committee has given nod to waste to energy plants in contempt of the court's order.

The Standing Committee cleared on 9th March 2005 two proposals for generating power by utilising solid waste. One is setting up of a 15 MW power plant at Okhla and another is revival of defunct Timarpur power plant of similar capacity.