Cut outlay for smart city plan: UT asks Centre again

Punjab governor and UT administrator VP Singh Badnore has written to housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri asking him to revise the outlay from around ₹6,724 crore to ₹2,914 crore

Unable to meet targets, the UT administration has approached the Union ministry of urban affairs yet again asking it to revise the smart city plan.

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Punjab governor and UT administrator VP Singh Badnore has written to housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri asking him to revise the outlay from around ₹6,724 crore to ₹2,914 crore.

With the UT featuring on the list of worst performing smart cities, Chandigarh Smart City Limited (CSCL) had approached the Smart City Mission (SCM) in February this year asking it to revise the smart city plan. The SCM works under the aegis of Union ministry of housing and urban affairs. Neither the SCM nor the ministry have responded to the request.

Earlier, Badnore had written a demi-official (DO) letter to the ministry of urban affairs secretary. However, with no change effected in the city’s smart city plan, the Union minister’s intervention has been sought.

CSCL has failed to achieve the ₹6,724-crore investment target committed to the ministry in 2016.

Why the revision? 

CSCL has requested that the revised smart city plan not exceed ₹2,900 crore since land required for developing the commercial hub is unavailable.

Initially, the smart-city firm had planned to develop Sector 43 as a commercial hub with a ₹4,000-crore investment under its public-private partnership model. “The project was scrapped since the land identified for the project was a deemed forest and there is no provision to de-notify it,” said a UT official, requesting anonymity.

Subsequently, CSCL made several attempts to procure land in other areas, including Sector 34, to initiate the project, but to no avail.

With UT not inclined to give CSCL land for any smart city project, the administration decided to revise its smart-city plan so that the ministry’s assessment for Chandigarh was not based on projects it cannot achieve.

“The city was put in the list of 20 worst smart cities in the ministry’s assessment mainly because it was not able to start a major commercial project,” said the official.

‘Revision will not affect other projects’

On being asked whether other projects will be affected, CSCL chief executive officer KK Yadav said, “The revision will not affect other projects. Our current project outlay of ₹2,900 crore crore will be sufficient for the carrying out all planned projects. The ₹4,000 crore project in Sector 43 was to developed on a public-private partnership model and the spending was an estimation. We have extended spending on other projects, which include expanding water storage capacity, and e-governance projects to ₹2,900 crore.”

Under the smart city mission, the Centre and the UT will contribute ₹500 each.