Corporators have alleged that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is pushing for an expensive waste-to-energy plant at Deonar dumping ground despite apprehensions raised about its viability.

The BMC has planned to set up a 2,000-metric-tonne-capacity waste-to-energy plant at the Deonar dumping ground, for which it has decided to appoint Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as a consultant at the cost of Rs 59 lakh.

However, Samajwadi Party corporator Rais Shaikh alleged that several efforts to set up such plants in the country had failed. “The study has shown that the quality of waste in Mumbai is not good enough for power generation. Despite this, the BMC has decided to go ahead with the plant,” he said.

Opposition party corporators said that the BMC’s move of setting up a waste-to-energy plant at the Deonar dump site is a knee-jerk reaction. Congress corporator from Bandra Asif Zakaria said, “This is only a knee-jerk reaction after the massive fire that broke out recently at the dumping ground. The BMC should do its basic duty of segregating the waste. But instead it is going for projects at exorbitant cost.”

MNS group leader Sandeep Deshpande demanded that the BMC should verify the expertise of TCS before appointing them as consultant. “We should know where the waste-to-energy plants set up with the help of TCS are running in the country. If not we should issue the tenders again,” he said.

However, additional municipal commissioner Sanjay Mukherjee assured that the plant at Deonar would be a path-breaking project. “We have appointed TCS, which is one of the pre-qualified consultants named by the Union urban development ministry,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a six-hour major drive, the BMC demolished more than 100 illegal hutments and godowns around the Deonar dumping ground.