New Delhi, Oct. 7 -- While roadside dust continues to be one of the biggest contributors to Delhi's air pollution, the city's mechanical road sweeping (MRS) operations have largely remained confined to arterial roads wider than 60 feet. Now, with the Delhi government initiating the process to procure its own MRS fleet for cleaning its 1,400km network of arterial roads, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is preparing to redeploy its existing machines to smaller inner-colony roads, officials said. At present, 52 MRS units run by the MCD are deployed on roads wider than 60 feet managed by the Public Works Department (PWD). A senior MCD official, who asked not to be identified, said that since PWD did not have its own mechanical sweepers, MCD's machines were being used on its network. "Now that the Delhi government has begun procuring its own MRS units, our machines can be shifted to smaller municipal roads. These will now operate on roads between 45ft and 60ft in width," the official said. Currently, MCD's fleet of 52 sweepers is supplemented by 14 new units expected under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), funded by the central government. Each sweeper covers around 30-35 km of lane length of road per day, and the corporation targets collecting about 150 tonnes of road dust daily. However, several councillors have alleged that dust collection claims are frequently exaggerated by civic officials and that deploying manual sweepers on stretches already serviced by mechanical units led to duplication of work and wastage of resources. Ashok Bhasin, who heads the North Delhi Residents' Welfare Federation, said there is a single machine in the north campus which runs from Maurice Nagar to Patel Chest. "The contractors aim to just complete the number of kilometers covered. The efficiency on roads wider than 60ft should be audited first to expose the corruption. Moreover, the state of roads is so poor that these machines would be ineffective. Dug up roads and pending work to lay down pipelines has turned the entire region into a dustbowl," he said....