After a five-day Maratha quota agitation, officials said on Wednesday that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had been able to collect more than 125 metric tonnes of garbage in Azad Maidan and its surroundings in South Mumbai. Guided by activist Manoj Jarange, the protest started on August 29 with an indefinite fast and ended on Tuesday afternoon when the Maharashtra government agreed to most of the demands that Jarange had presented.
Azad Maidan was the epicenter of the agitation, and it attracted thousands of members of the Maratha community all over the state. Localities around this area, such as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) and the headquarters of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, were used as temporary camps by protesting crowds. A lot of them were observed cooking, eating, sleeping, and even bathing on pavements and roads, and this caused a lot of garbage to be left behind. Piles of remaining food, mineral water containers, wrappers, paper plates, and cups cluttered the field, posing a challenge to the sanitation department.
The BMC said it picked up 30 tonnes of rubbish on August 31 and September 1, with a high of 57 tonnes the following day, September 2, the highest during the period of the protest. On September 1, a meeting was convened by BMC Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani with the Maratha quota activists to discuss the issue of sanitation within and outside Azad Maidan.
Four hundred and sixty-six civic staffers (438 labourers, 16 head supervisors, 11 supervisors, and one assistant head supervisor) were assigned to keep things clean. The cleanup push used three massive and two small compactors, 13 sewer cleaning vehicles (SCVs), a litter picker, and four special machines, such as suction and jetting machines.
In line with sanitation, the civic body supplied more than 350 mobile toilets in three places, including Azad Maidan.
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