Bhagalpur aspires to join the league of smart cities but lack of a solid waste management programme and a proper sewerage system in the town leaves a lot to be desired. 

Sewerage and drainage systems are key factors for the creation of a smart scheme under the project launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The town, popularly called the Silk City, is a poor performer on both these fronts. 

The Bhagalpur Municipal Corporation, which is responsible for solid waste management and garbage disposal, dumps the waste, including sewage, collected from the town along the banks of the Ganga and also in empty places on the side of national highways passing through the town, around 270km east of Patna.

“Nearly 17km stretch of the riverbank from Nathnagar to Barari Ghat is covered with garbage. As is any vacant land next to the National Highway 80. All these areas have been turned into the Bhagalpur Municipal Corporation’s dumping yard,” said Anand Mohan Jha, a resident of Barari. 

The town is divided into 51 wards and according to official records, there are 71,300 households that generate 300 tonnes of garbage daily.

A Hyderabad-based non-government organisation Ramkey had earlier been assigned the job of solid waste management in Bhagalpur. Sources said the company left in 2013, mainly because of a lack of a separate dumping yard. The civic body, trying to arrange for a solid waste management facility, recently got involved in a major controversy after it purchased land at Tarcha village. Residents of the area opposed the move as it was alleged illegal occupants of the land — purportedly owned by a trust — were conducting the transaction. 

Deputy mayor of Bhagalpur Preety Shekhar admitted that the town’s garbage problems stemmed from its failure to have a dumping ground. “We have placed the demand for a separate dumping yard before the chief minister. Cleanliness of the town is our priority and we have taken initiatives for that,” she said. 

Treatment of wastewater before its discharge in the Ganga is also flawed in the town. Of six sewage treatment plants in the town, constructed in the early 1990s, five are defunct. 

Sources in the civic body said Rs 24 crore had been sanctioned by the urban development department in 2009-10 but the agency assigned the job to oversee the drainage system work refused to work at the rates offered. In 2011, the civic body and the company conducted a survey for the estimated amount required for the project and sent a proposal of Rs 210 crore to the urban development department. The proposal has been pending.