Ranchi: The state pollution watchdog’s ambitious plan to draw up electronic waste inventories in all the 24 districts is caught in an interdepartmental jinx.

Having done precious little for years to curtail, e-waste – viz. computers, televisions, VCRs, stereos, copiers, fax machines, etc. that have completed their useful life – the Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board (JSPCB) had on January 5 floated a tender to hire a specialist agency to ascertain the quantum of junk and ensure proper disposal.

The tender was initially scheduled to be opened on February 1. Citing “unavoidable reasons”, the date was postponed to March 29, Tuesday. Now, the regulatory authority – infamous for its lack of technical know-how in e-waste handling and perennial manpower crunch – has once again deferred the bid to April 21, citing the same excuse.

A government insider said the mandatory interdepartmental meeting to finalise a suitable agency was not being held. “Representatives from departments (forest and environment, and finance, besides JSPCB) have to primarily sit together and select an agency after an evaluation processes. That meeting hasn’t happened because of lack of co-ordination. If one department is free, the others are not,” he said.

Sanjay Suman, member-secretary of JSPCB, said they would try their best to finalise an agency by April. “Four companies, with experience in e-waste handling, have evinced interest. We have sent the file to the government (read forest department), seeking guidance. We are hoping to finalise an agency by next month,” he said, without offering further details about the bidders, reported The Telegraph.

Clueless on the amount of electronic junk Jharkhand generates every day, the JSPCB was caught in a tight spot after the National Green Tribunal, late last year, asked all monitoring agencies in the country to furnish detailed inventories of e-waste and disposal methods being followed. If sources are to be believed, the JSPCB only apprised the tribunal about its plans without any substantive data on e-waste generation.

Like most states in India, Jharkhand too is sitting on tonnes of untreated e-waste, given the rate at which people buy phones, computers and home appliances, among others.

Obsolete computers form a bulk of e-waste currently found in landfills. Televisions, refrigerators and other household appliances, and phones, too end up as normal garbage, courtesy general ignorance about e-waste and absence of authorised collection and recycling centres.

As a result, toxic metals such as lead and cadmium, and chemicals like beryllium from these gadgets poison air, water and soil.