Municipal authorities are failing at their basic jobs, which is managing waste, said NITI Aayog chief executive officer Amitabh Kant at a conference on waste management in New Delhi. Speaking at a conference titled ‘Waste Reduction, Circular Economy and Enhanced Livelihoods’ organised by non-profit entities Chintan and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the University of Chicago, India, Kant criticised the municipal authorities for the dismal situation of waste management in India. “Municipalities are not doing their jobs, and if they fail at doing their basic job of managing waste, they need to be voted out.”

Without mincing his words, the planning body chief said their primary job is to keep the areas under their jurisdiction clean but instead they are getting into the business of construction. “Their one point plan has to be waste. But they are getting into building constructions and mayors have allowed them to go haywire.” He suggested that the “best officers of states need to be posted as municipal commissioners and they should be given tenure to perform”…