“Seelampur mein toh sirf wire market hai, purane electronics ke liye aap ko Goutampuri jana padega.”

In November 2025, we set out to explore the suburban heart of East Delhi, a place synonymous with motherboards, discarded cellphones and the relentless hum of informal recycling. Our destination was Seelampur, a market known globally as a hub for e-waste dismantling.  As we entered the New Seelampur market, no one seemed to be able to tell us of the e-waste dismantling operations, something Seelampur is known for. Walking through the market, we did see many wire shops. Slightly away, but still in plain sight, in the alleyways connected to the main road, scrap workers were stripping down wires and separating the  thick aluminium coils from them, as thin copper sheets lay across the floor. An elderly man seated nearby explained that the metal was to be used solely for utensils. On further questioning, he told us to go to Galli No. 4 in Old Seelampur, home to the e-waste market, where old phones, computers, and electronic scrap are bought and sold.

We first stopped by Goutampuri’s kabbadi market. While some shops/ godowns seemed to be littered with old home appliances, motherboards and electric wires, the market was more or less a wholesale market for all kinds of electronic items, both old and new. Here again, a receptive store owner mentioned Galli No. 4 in Old Seelampur, as well as a Galli No.2 in Mustaffabad, for what we were looking for.

In the auto to Old Seelampur market, our driver warned us that the e-waste market we were going to check out did not have much business during the day, rather it operated at odd hours of the night. As we reached the narrow lanes of Old Seelampur market’s Galli No.4, we did indeed notice that most of the shops or shacks had their shutters down. In the few open units, old motor parts, geysers, and phone cases lay about, but a majority of the waste seemed to be motherboards and electronic chips. While fixing motor parts in his shop, a worker kindly offered us deeper insights into this market, which he explained starts at 12 AM and winds down by 6 AM. Scrap electronics from across India make their way to Old Seelampur, where they are dismantled, segregated and then sold back into the market to buyers who take them for further processing. High-value and good-quality chips containing gold and large RAMs are exported, mainly to China, while the remaining material is processed domestically. According to him, Old Seelampur now functions only as a hub for dismantling and sorting e-waste. While earlier there used to be some smelting for copper extraction, no polluting activities happen here anymore. A few others we spoke to in the area reinforced the same, stating that recycling and processing of e-waste occurs elsewhere, in places like Loni and Moradabad.

While that may or may not be the case, the work happening in Seelampur is far from non-polluting or harmless. Scrap materials and loose electronic parts spill into the streets, while the workers sit in dimly lit shops, picking apart motherboards with their bare hands. A few meters away, at the opening of the street, the Seelampur nala sits choked to the brim with waste.