Ten Years, 50 Acres, No Dumping Ground: Mohali's Waste Backlog And The Sectors Living With It दस साल, 50 एकड़, कोई डंपिंग ग्राउंड नहीं: मोहाली का कचरा बैकलॉग और इसके साथ जी रहे सेक्टर ਦਸ ਸਾਲ, 50 ਏਕੜ, ਕੋਈ ਡੰਪਿੰਗ ਗਰਾਊਂਡ ਨਹੀਂ: ਮੋਹਾਲੀ ਦਾ ਵੇਸਟ ਬੈਕਲਾਗ ਅਤੇ ਇਸ ਨਾਲ ਜੀਉਂਦੇ ਸੈਕਟਰ

On Monday the Mohali Municipal Corporation approved a compressed biogas plant at Samgauli, in Dera Bassi tehsil, with a capacity of around 300 tonnes a day. It will take waste from Mohali and eight nearby towns and produce organic fertiliser and biogas. Twenty acres go to HPCL Renewable and Green Energy Limited, a Hindustan Petroleum subsidiary, for thirty years, free of cost or at a nominal lease rate.

It is roughly the fourth serious scheme proposed for that same piece of land since a tribunal ordered the city to acquire it. Until one of them works, the waste has to go somewhere. Where it currently goes is the part that matters if you own property in this district.

What was approved, and what happens next

The nine towns feeding the plant are Mohali, Zirakpur, Kharar, Nayagaon, Dera Bassi, Kurali, Lalru, Banur and Gharuan. That is very close to the full Greater Mohali cluster, which tells you the scale of the problem being solved and how many places are waiting on the solution.

What follows the approval is land demarcation, project feasibility testing and other formalities. Nothing is built yet. The House cleared thirteen agenda items that day, and this was one of them.

The meeting was chaired by Mayor Sarabjit Singh Samana, of the AAP, who is the son of Mohali MLA Kulwant Singh. His predecessor, Amarjit Singh Sidhu, spent much of the past year attacking the state government and the MLA over this precise site. Most of the on-record detail below comes from that period, and the change of chair is worth holding in mind when reading it.

The decade behind it

In January 2015 the National Green Tribunal's Principal Bench, on an application by the Mohali Industry and Commerce Association over illegal dumping in Patiala ki Rao, directed the Mohali MC to complete land acquisition for the Samgauli site within one year. Eleven years later, 39 of the 50 acres are held.

The 11 that are not have a history. The Samgauli land was caught up in the Golden Forest Land scam, with multiple parties claiming ownership. The Local Bodies Minister told the Assembly in March 2026 that the balance was under litigation. Mayor Sidhu, earlier the same year, described it as stuck with the Revenue Department.

In January 2020 the state cleared a 7 MW waste-to-energy plant on the site under a build-own-operate model, part of the GMADA and Patiala municipal solid waste cluster, processing 600 tonnes a day from Mohali and Patiala, with a memorandum between NTPC and the Mohali MC and a two year timeline. It was not built.

The MC later floated tenders for a 250 to 400 tonne processing plant costing ₹150 to 200 crore. Not a single bid came in. The Commissioner at the time attributed it to private players expecting grants the corporation had no provision to give.

HPCL and GAIL then surveyed the site and prepared a project report costing around ₹27 crore. That tender was cancelled. Answering Mohali's own AAP MLA Kulwant Singh in the Assembly in March 2026, Local Bodies Minister Sanjeev Arora confirmed the cancellation, said the government held 39 of the 50 acres with 11 under litigation, and said work would start soon.

What has physically happened on the ground in eleven years: 39 acres acquired and a boundary wall built for about ₹35 lakh. Mayor Sidhu said in 2026 that the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department had issued an NOC for an access road costing ₹29 crore, with no ground-level work started. There is no access road to the site.

Where the waste goes in the meantime

This is the part with a property address attached, and the answer is not one address.

The old dumping ground near Industrial Area Phase 8B, on the Sector 74 side, took Mohali's waste from 2005. A court ordered it stopped in 2024 on environmental grounds, and it was shut. The city has had no dumping ground since.

Mohali generates more than 150 tonnes of garbage a day against a processing contract covering 100 tonnes. The surplus accumulates at the corporation's resource management centre points, which sit inside the city rather than outside it, with segregated waste moving on to a processing site at Jagatpura. Waste from GMADA areas, private housing societies and Balongi is also being dumped within MC limits.

The consequence is that the argument has moved from one site on the edge of the district to a dozen sites inside it. Residents of Phases 10 and 11 locked the gates of the Shahimajra RMC in protest. The National Green Tribunal took suo motu notice of that protest on 10 August and, by an order of 21 August, impleaded the Municipal Corporation, the Punjab Pollution Control Board and the Mohali Deputy Commissioner as respondents. The PPCB has told the tribunal it will act against the corporation if a breach of the Solid Waste Management Rules is established.

Residents of Sector 74, Sector 90, Sector 91 and Chappar Chiri have separately opposed any restart near them, and protested near Industrial Area Phase 8B after clearing work began on 14 acres beside the old site. Residents of Phase 5 have pressed to have their RMC moved. The garbage crisis has been reported as acute near Shahi Majra and near Judge Colony in Sector 77.

For anyone evaluating a property in this district, that produces two questions worth asking on site rather than from a listing. Where is the nearest RMC point to the address, and what is upwind of it. And whether that RMC is one of the ones currently under protest or under tribunal scrutiny, because the locations residents are fighting over are in some of the most expensive sectors in the city.

The Samgauli side carries the mirror image of the question. Dera Bassi tehsil land within reach of a 300 tonne processing facility is in a different position from land that is not, and the village has its own documented history of odour complaints. In 2023 the SDM issued a notice to the Punjab Pollution Control Board over wet waste from liquor and beer factories being dumped and dried on roads and fields near Samgauli, with two government schools close by. That is a separate matter from the municipal plant, but it is the same village and the same prevailing conditions.

What the pattern says

The Samgauli file reads like several others in this region. A site ordered acquired by a tribunal within a year. Title litigation running back to a land scam. A large scheme announced with a two year completion. A tender that draws no bids. A second tender cancelled. An access road with an NOC and no work. And eleven years later, a fresh approval and a fresh set of formalities.

It is the same shape as the Phase 1 to 11 sewerage, where a forty-year-old dart system line is dilapidated enough to collapse and sink the road above it, with a ₹200 crore overhaul estimate awaiting state approval while the sanctioned work has come through AMRUT in tranches of around ₹22 crore. It is the same shape as the ₹1,014 crore in GMADA dues under dispute that the authority has been trying to recover. Land gets designated quickly in this district. What sits on it arrives slowly, if at all.

There is money in the system, which is what makes the delay awkward. At the same House meeting, former Deputy Mayor Kuljit Singh Bedi urged the state to put the surplus from GMADA's 21 August property auction into basic city infrastructure. That auction sold 27 of 36 properties for ₹5,391 crore against a combined reserve price of ₹3,872 crore. The gap between what the land fetched and what it was expected to fetch is more than ₹1,500 crore, or roughly fifty times the cost of the access road that has not been built.

What to watch

Whether land demarcation and feasibility testing at Samgauli actually complete, since that is the immediate next step and previous attempts stalled before this point.

Whether the access road gets built, since a processing plant reachable only by a track is not a processing plant, and this is the item with the longest record of inaction.

The timeline. The Municipal Commissioner has put Samgauli at more than two years from operational even if every obstacle were cleared immediately, which places the earliest realistic date beyond 2028. The 11 acres in litigation may matter less than it appears, since the plant needs 20 acres and 39 are held, but the same title dispute has outlasted four schemes.

And what the NGT does with the Shahimajra matter, because that proceeding, not Samgauli, is what will determine where the city's waste sits over the next two years.

Live inventory and current asking ranges across the affected towns are on our Mohali corridor page and our Tricity page, and every notification affecting these areas is recorded in the notices archive.

Waste infrastructure is the least glamorous thing a city builds and among the most consequential for the people living beside it. Eleven years on, Mohali still does not have its own.

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Sources

- 300-tonne Samgauli biogas plant gets Mohali MC nod, The Tribune, 25 August 2026, on the approval, the HPCL subsidiary lease, the nine towns, the 13 agenda items and the GMADA auction figures
- NGT directs Mohali MC to acquire land within a year, The Tribune, January 2015, on the tribunal direction and the Mohali Industry and Commerce Association application
- Govt approves waste-to-energy plant in Mohali, The Tribune, 6 January 2020, on the 7 MW build-own-operate scheme, the 600 TPD cluster and the NTPC memorandum
- Processing of waste: Mohali MC tender draws blank, The Tribune, on the failed tender, the Commissioner's explanation and the Phase VIII site as it then operated
- AAP MLA slams Punjab Govt over waste management in Mohali, The Tribune, 9 March 2026, on the Assembly exchange, the 39 and 11 acre split and the cancelled GAIL and HPCL tender
- Mohali Mayor visits Samgoli dumping site, highlights shortcomings, The Tribune, on the ₹29 crore road NOC, the ₹35 lakh boundary wall and the 150 against 100 tonne gap
- Mayor, deputy train guns at AAP govt for Mohali's garbage woes, The Tribune, on the ₹27 crore HPCL and GAIL project report and the state of the site
- GMADA to earmark 30 acres near Jhanjeri for dumping ground: Mohali Mayor, The Tribune, on the closure of the Phase 8B site by court order and the absence of any dumping ground
- Mohali MC, admn mute spectators as anger mounts over garbage mess, The Tribune, on the 2005 start and 2024 court-ordered closure and the Sector 74, 90, 91 and Chappar Chiri opposition
- Pollution control board replies to NGT on Mohali garbage mess, The Tribune, on the suo motu notice, the 21 August impleading order and the Jagatpura processing site
- Mohali civic body meet on disposal of waste, dumping site inconclusive, The Tribune, on the Municipal Commissioner's two-year estimate
- Dera Bassi: Notice to PPCB over pollution due to factory wet waste in Samgauli, The Tribune, December 2023, on the odour complaints and the SDM notice