With less than a year left to the deadline of September 2026, Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Manohar Lal on Saturday launched a programme to completely clear 214 legacy landfills, which have a total of 8.8 crore metric tonnes of garbage piled up, in 202 cities.
The Dumpsite Remediation Accelerator Programme comes at a time when just one year is left in the five-year Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0, which was launched in 2021 with the goal of clearing all legacy landfills in cities. As per the SBM-U website, as on Saturday, 49% of the area of legacy landfills was yet to be reclaimed and 41% of the waste was yet to be remediated.
Launched at the National Urban Conclave here, the programme will focus on the 214 sites, which account for about 80% of the waste at the 1,428 legacy landfills that are yet to be remediated. Under the programme, the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry said cities would be offered additional financial support for remediation and waste processing projects; corporate and public sector undertakings would be roped in for supporting the projects; Central and state road agencies would be asked to use the inert waste for road construction projects; and political and administrative leaders would be asked to “adopt” one of the dumpsites. Central financial assistance of `2,716 crore had been approved for the projects.
The Minister also announced a new programme for enabling local bodies to raise private funds. The Urban Invest Window, a project of HUDCO, will help cities identify projects, mobilise capital and implement the project, as per the Ministry. HUDCO will repurpose its regional offices for this, it said.
“It is estimated we will need `80 lakh crore as our urban areas grow… I don’t think that the Centre and state governments will invest that much. We will have to encourage private partnership and investment from the public,” the Union minister said.
