New Delhi, Oct. 1 -- The plan was to set up a lush bamboo grove at the Bhalswa landfill, Delhi's infamous garbage mountain, marking its transformation into a "green zone". A five-acre reclaimed site was selected and thousands of bamboo saplings were planted on March 4, 2025, in a drive led by the former lieutenant governor and Chief Minister Rekha Gupta. More than a year on, however, the site has a 30-feet high garbage mound and, everyday, municipal vehicles can be seen adding truckloads of garbage to it.

A municipal official said that six thousand bamboo saplings were planted but the project was abandoned and the site was instead used for dumping garbage. "The biomining project is being carried out on the old legacy waste so we needed s...