Aafrin Kidwai 
According to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), by failing to develop any strategy or policy for the safe disposal of waste or by failing to collect user fees from the generators, the state government of Odisha and civic bodies in urban areas have engaged in severe irregularities in solid waste management.
The CAG highlighted that the Odisha government did not launch any strategy or policy to minimize, reuse, or recycle waste until March 2021, resulting in the dumping of 90% of the waste at landfills and dump sites without processing in its most recent performance audit report on “Waste Management in Urban Areas.”
“The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2016, notified on April 8, 2016, stipulated that the state government should prepare a State Policy and strategy on SWM within one year of notification of the Rules. However, the Housing and Urban Development (H&UD) department didn’t notify a State Policy for integrated SWM till February 2022,” the CAG stated, as per a report in Construction World.
In Smart Cities, a total of 2,956 tonnes of solid waste per day and 35,057 tonnes of plastic waste per year were disposed of without processing in 2015-20. The audit further observed that the ULBs failed to provide basic facilities to households such as issuing bins for source segregation, collection of solid waste, sweeping of streets, lanes, and roads of wards of ULBs on a daily basis, and creating public awareness, among other things.
