Jharkhand govt identifies 340 acres of land for smart city project
The Jharkhand government has identified 340 acres of land in the Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC) campus in Ranchi to build its smart city, urban development department secretary Arun Kumar Singh said on Sunday.
The Jharkhand government has identified 340 acres of land in the Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC) campus in Ranchi to build its smart city, urban development department secretary Arun Kumar Singh said on Sunday.
Ranchi is among the 98 cities of the country which have qualified for the smart city project. The said land is located in Dhurwa area of the state capital, adjoining the Jharkhand secretariat.
Now, all cities will have to submit their final Smart City Proposal (SCP) that should include the area to be developed as smart city. The SCP will be evaluated based on set criteria in the second stage of “City Challenge” competition for identifying the top scoring 20 cities for financing during the current financial year.
The Centre and the state will jointly contribute Rs 1,000 crore during next five years to build the city. Experts, however, said that a smart city cannot be developed on Greenfield at Rs 1,000 crore.
Singh said, “Besides the centre and the state’s contributions, revenue would also be generated through other sources. City would be developed in public private partnership (PPP) mode where private party would also bring investment. We are also looking for financial institutions like World Bank and others for revenue.”
State’s theme for smart city would be skill and education development. “We will focus on skill and education in the smart city. The project will also help generate large-scale employment,” he said.
The state had earlier decided to go for retrofitting, which was scraped later. Ranchi deputy mayor Sanjeev Vijayvargiya said, “We had three options to go for--retrofitting, redevelopment or Greenfield. Earlier, retrofitting was in our mind but it was not feasible as it required consensus of a large section of people. Therefore, we picked the Greenfield project (HEC land) and found undisputed land near the state secretariat.”
Vijayvargiya said the area was selected for other reasons also like its proximity to airport and railway station, he said.
Ernst & Young, a consultant, has been preparing the smart city proposal (SCP) for Jharkhand on basis of the public opinion that Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) has collected through various programmes.
Rajesh Kumar Sharma, director state urban development agency (SUDA), said, “SCP preparation is in the final stage. We will submit it to the Centre by December 15.”
We have identified the land but it cannot be disclosed as final approval is awaited.” He, however, said that SCP was in final stage and would be sent to the Centre by December 15.
