Hyderabad: Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka on Tuesday, May 19, outlined the state’s plans to deploy nearly 9,600 electric waste collection vehicles, remediate legacy dump sites and build decentralised waste processing infrastructure, addressing a two-day national review meeting on Swachh Bharat Mission–Urban 2.0 in New Delhi.
The meeting, inaugurated by Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Manohar Lal Khattar at Vigyan Bhavan, brought together ministers and senior officials from across the country to review urban sanitation and solid waste management progress.
Bhatti told the gathering that Telangana was introducing 9,596 electric Swachh Auto Tippers fitted with separate compartments for four-way waste segregation and QR code-based monitoring. On waste processing, he said the state was prioritising decentralised systems to treat wet waste closer to the point of generation.
He said remediation of legacy dump yards was a top priority. At Hyderabad’s Jawaharnagar dump yard, IIT Bombay was providing technical guidance for a long-term environmental monitoring system. At the Autonagar site, biomining had cleared nearly 30 per cent of around 22 lakh metric tonnes of waste spread across 40 acre, with reclaimed land to be developed into parks and public facilities.
“Our goal is to transform dump yards into development centres,” he said.
Bhatti also referenced a proposed Eco-Town project modelled on Japan’s Kitakyushu circular economy initiative and called for a “War on Waste — Waste to Wealth” approach, arguing that waste management must evolve into an economic value creation movement. He appealed to the Centre for viability gap funding for waste-to-energy and recycling infrastructure.
