Get to Know about India's Tallest Rubbish Mountain!

The country's tallest rubbish mountain in Delhi is on course to rise higher than the Taj Mahal in the next year,

Becoming a fetid symbol for what the UN considers the world's most polluted capital.

Hawks and other birds of prey hover around the towering Ghazipur landfill on the eastern fringe of the city, stray cows, dogs and rats wander at will over the huge expanse of smoking filth.

Taking up the area of more than 40 football pitches, Ghazipur rises by nearly 10 metres a year with no end in sight to its foul-smelling growth.

According to East Delhi's superintendent engineer Arun Kumar, it is already more than 65 metres (213 feet) high.

At its current rate of growth, it will be taller than the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra, some 73 metres high, in 2020.

The Supreme Court warned last year that red warning lights will soon have to be put on the dump to alert passing jets.

Ghazipur was opened in 1984 and reached its capacity in 2002 when it should have been closed.

But the city's detritus has kept on arriving each day in hundreds of trucks.

Fires, sparked by methane gas coming from the dump, regularly break out and take days to extinguish.

Leachate, a black toxic liquid, oozes from the dump into a local canal.

Residents say the dump often makes breathing virtually impossible. Protests do not work and now many people are leaving the district.

A recent study said the dump was a health risk for people living within five kilometres (three miles), including for cancer.

Traffic clogged streets, heavy industry and annual burning of fields in regions around Delhi have already made the Indian capital notorious for its pollution.

Indian cities are among the world's largest garbage producers, generating 62 million tonnes of waste annually.

By 2030, that could rise to 165 million tonnes, according to government figures.