Chandigarh, April 18 -- Nearly 20 days after the Chandigarh administration claimed before the Punjab and Haryana high court (HC) that the legacy waste at Dadumajra would be cleared within 10 days, it has moved the deadline to the first week of May. UT's senior standing counsel Amit Jhanji on Friday told the HC bench of chief justice Sheel Nagu and justice Sanjiv Berry that there is no fresh dumping taking place at the spot and only the legacy waste remains. "..while an earlier internal target of April 30 had been considered, a buffer had been kept in view of possible disruptions," he said while giving a fresh deadline of May first week. The submissions were made during the resumed hearing of a 2016 plea which sought directions to the MC to clear the garbage dump area. Earlier, on March 27, the civic body had stated that only 6,100 metric tonnes (MT) of waste remained and would be cleared within 10 days. It is now attributing the delay to "unseasonal rain spells" in March. Decades of inadequate garbage processing left Chandigarh grappling with three mountains of legacy waste. The first mountain, comprising 5 lakh MT, was fully cleared by December 2022 at a cost of Rs.33 crore. The second mountain, of 8 lakh MT, was originally slated for clearance by July 2023 under a Rs.68-crore Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 project. The deadline was extended five times (see box). While the second mountain was being remediated, a third heap of 2.4 lakh MT emerged. It is expected to be cleared by May after an expenditure of Rs.12 crore. In all, the MC has ended up spending over Rs.110 crore for clearing the trash. The city, which shows high overall cleanliness, has also slipped on Swachh rankings due to the legacy landfill. During the hearing, petitioner advocate Amit Sharma had pointed out that despite multiple hearings, progress on the ground has remained slow. He also placed on record a tabulated application, detailing instances of alleged forgery. Chief justice Sheel Nagu observed that allegations relating to perjury and submission of false documents were serious in nature and would require proper adjudication. The matter will now be taken up again in May....