BBMP's tender for biomining Mandur landfill site cleared

For the first time in recent years, the finance department was called in to vet a tender document pertaining to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).

This was done after some contractors complained to the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) that the BBMP’s original tender conditions were drafted only to help select firms.

The BBMP, which usually has the powers to draft tender conditions, was forced to withdraw the first bids and has now floated fresh tenders. Some of the conditions modified in the new tenders are: joint venture to be limited to not more than three partners, the tenderer must have executed work in biomining, bioremediation and scientific landfill of a quantity equivalent to eight lakh metric tonnes and have an average annual turnover of Rs 75 crore.

The Rs 89-crore project, which was on the drawing board for the last five years, pertains to biomining the city’s largest landfill site at Mandur near Hoskote.

On February 28, 2021, DH carried a detailed article on the slow progress of the work.

The civic body plans to rehabilitate about 85 acres of landfill in the first phase. This is known as the southern block. The northern block (60 acres) is likely to be taken up in the next phase. Both these landfills received 20 lakh tonnes of garbage from the city for six years until local villagers staged a massive, weeks-long protest.

Biomining, officials said, will help reclaim land worth crores of rupees. “The heaps of garbage will be converted into compost and soil, which may constitute about 60% of the total volume. The remaining 40% will be inerts such as plastics, metals etc, which either be recycled or sent to abandoned quarries,” said Sarfaraz Khan, joint commissioner of the BBMP’s solid waste management division.

Such a large financial aid towards the biomining of Mandur landfill was sanctioned by citing the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, which mandate the closure and rehabilitation of old dump yards that no longer receive waste. The city is home to at least a dozen landfill sites but none has been rehabilitated.

When the biomining of the Mandur landfill site was first announced in 2016, the civic body wanted to convert the
recovered land into a golf course.

A few years later, the BBMP promised to hand over the land to the housing department to construct houses for the poor. Five years on, all of the BBMP’s promises have remained on the paper.