City gears up to be included in ‘Smart City’ list

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 2

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi launching the smart city project in New Delhi recently, the Municipal Corporation of Jalandhar (MCJ) has geared up to get the city included in the project.

The MCJ is trying hard to give the city a 21st-century “smart city” look, an urban-planning term for the gleaming metropolises of the future, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to create by 2022.

So far, the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) has allotted three cities to Punjab that would be developed as smart cities by 2020. While Ludhiana and Amritsar have already made it to the top two, many other cities like Jalandhar, Mohali and Patiala are vying to win the last spot.

The selection to the first phase would be done at the state government level where it would forward the name of three cities to the MoUD. The selection would be made on the basis of the performance report sent by the Urban Local Body (ULB) of the respective city.

However, even if Jalandhar makes it to the top three to be recommended by the state government for inclusion in the project, it will have to compete with 99 other cities to be shortlisted amongst the top 20 cities to be developed in the first phase of the project.

According to Mayor Sunil Jyoti, the selection parameters for the smart city has the number of households having toilets, publishing of the monthly e-newsletter by the Urban Local Body and collection of the internally generated revenues e.g taxes, fee and charges etc.

He also said that self-financing would also be taken into account that would reflect the payment of salaries by urban local bodies up to last month, auditing of accounts up to FY 2012-13, contribution of internal revenues to the Budget for 2014-15 and the percentage of establishment and maintenance cost of water supply met through user charges during 2014-15.

Also, past track record is percentage of the JNNURM projects completed which were sanctioned till 2012, percentage of city level reforms achieved under JNNURM and extent of capital expenditure met from internal resources would also be taken into account for the final inclusion into the top 20 list.

“We are just waiting for the state government’s call for the entries. Though we are a little behind on the number of households having toilets, we are through with a majority of the criteria set by the MoUD to get approved at the first stage,” said Jyoti. He said presently only 450 households had sent an online request for the construction of toilets in the city.

He also said that at the penultimate stage, a US delegation will visit the city to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) on the city. The DPR, which would include the present condition and requirements of the city to upgrade it into a Smart City, would be submitted to the State and the Central governments. Based on the DPR, the Centre would identify top 20 cities out of a total 100 in the country to be given priority under the Smart City Mission.